THE 



CHIEF END OF REVELATION. 



ALEXANDER BALMAIN BRUCE, D.D., 

Professor of Apologetics and New Testament Exegesis, Free Church College^ 

Glasgow; Author of '" 'The Training of t&e Twelve" " The Humiliation 

of Christ" Etc. 



NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY 

900 BROADWAY, COR 20th STREET. 












Edward O. Jenkins, Printer, 20 North William Street, New York. 



PREFACE. 



PORTIONS of the contents of this volume were 
recently delivered as Lectures at the Presbyterian 
College, London. I have taken occasion from the 
opportunity thus afforded, to write at greater length, 
and with mpre fulness, than was necessary for the 
immediate purpose, on a subject which appears to 
me of great importance in its bearing both on Chris- 
tian Apologetics and on the internal life and future 
fortunes of the Church. Two convictions have been 
ruling motives in this study. One is, that in many 
respects the old lines of apologetic argument no 
longer suffice either to express the thoughts of faith 
or to meet successfully the assaults of unbelief. The 
other is, that the Church is not likely again to wield 
the influence which of right belongs to her as cus- 
todian of the precious treasure of Christian truth, 
unless she show herself possessed of vitality sufficient 
to originate a new development in all directions, and 
among others in Doctrine ; refusing to accept as her 
final position either the agnosticism of modern cult- 
ure, or blind adherence to traditional dogmatism. 
The last chapter of the book refers more particularly 
to this latter topic. The views there expressed may 



V 



4 PREFACE. 

satisfy neither liberals nor conservatives in theology. 
I do not deprecate criticism, but I ask the critics to 
remember that the apologist's task in these days is a 
delicate one. It will be observed that very frequent 
reference is made to the author of the well-known 
work, " Literature and Dogma." This was due to 
one who is the accepted exponent of a wide-spread 
tendency of thought on the subject of religion, whose 
significance it vitally concerns the Church of the 
present to understand. 

The Author. 

Glasgow, April, 1881. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

MISCONCEPTIONS. 

Classification of Misconceptions 13 

Kabbalism 14 

Dogmatism » . 18 

Illuminism 22 

Lessing 24 

Reimarus 28 

W. Rathbone Greg • . . . 31 

Spinoza 35 

Kant and Fichte 42 

Matthew Arnold 44 

CHAPTER II. 

THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REVELATION. 

Revelation and the Bible 55 

Idea of Revelation . . 58 

A Credible Idea 63 

Theories of Redemption 65 

The Purpose of Grace in the Bible 73 



CONTENTS. 



The Call of Abraham .... 

The Trial of Abraham 

Elements of Grace in Abraham's History 



81 
89 
95 



CHAPTER III. 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



A priori Views 

The Actual Method 
Congenial to the Idea of Grace 
Laws of Progress . .... 
The Principle of Election . 

Ethnic Religions 

Salvation not by Doctrinal Knowledge 

Moral Defects of Early Stages 

The Agents of Revelation 

The Destruction of the Canaanites 

Crude Legislation .... 

Traces of Legal Spirit in Old Testament 



99 
99 
102 
105 
108 
no 
116 
120 
123 
127 

134 
136 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FUNCTION OF MIRACLE IN REVELATION. 

Old View 149 

Its Defects 153 

True View 155 

Mr. Arnold's Typical Miracle 157 

Can Miracles be Removed from Bible without Altering 

our Idea of it 159 

Bible View of Miracle 164 

Dr. Abbot on Miracles 169 



CONTENTS. 7 

Spinoza and Miracles 170 

Ambiguous Character of Miracles 175 

Advantage of our Position compared with that of those 

who immediately received Revelation . . . 181 

Lessing on Miracles 183 

CHAPTER V. 

THE FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN REVELATION. 

Older View 193 

Prophecy Ethical 196 

Not History Written Beforehand 198 

Old and New Schools of Interpreters .... 203 

Conditional Element in Prophecy 207 

Mr. Arnold's View of Messianic Prophecy . . . 210 
Function of Prophecy in Revelation . . . .211 

In Reference to Law 212 

In Reference to Promise 213 

Prophetic Idea of God 215 

Prophetic Universalism 219 

Prophetic Ideals of the Future 221 

Fulfilled in Jesus and Christianity 227 

The Method of Proof 227 

Christ His Own Witness 232 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 

The Speculative Presuppositions of Christianity . . 240 

Mr. Arnold's Agnosticism 249 

Dr. Mansel's Modified Agnosticism ...... 252 

The Bible Profitable for Doctrine . . . . 254 



8 CONTENTS. 

Use and Abuse of the Bible for Doctrine . . . 257 

Qualification for Interpreting the Bible . . . 258 

Fundamental Truths of Faith 261 

Four Types of Doctrine concerning the Gift of Grace in 

the New Testament 265 

Doctrines of Faith and Theological Dogmas . . . 273 

Applications of this Distinction 275 

Conclusion 277 



Page 51, 


line 


" 57, 


" 


1 70, 




' 73, 


" 


" 108, 


" 



ERRATA. 

1, for raison d^etre of its own existence, read reason of its own 
existence. 

6, for that it is, read that is. 

7, for the exclusion, read its exclusion. 

$,for on those, read of those. Line b,for of those, read on those. 
20, for by the latter, read by them. 



MISCONCEPTIONS. 



CHAPTER I. 

MISCONCEPTIONS. 

My purpose in this book is to endeavour to form 
as definite ideas as possible concerning the chief de- 
sign of revelation, or God's end in making that special 
manifestation of Himself above the plane of nature, 
whereof the Bible is the literary record — and to bring 
the ideas thus formed to bear on past and present con- 
troversies, as aids to faith and barriers against unbelief. 
On first view this may appear a very superfluous task. 
Who, it may be asked, does not know the answer to 
the question, What do the Scriptures principally 
teach? Yet nothing is more certain than that vague 
or erroneous notions have been and still are enter- 
tained on this subject both by believers and by unbe- 
lievers ; creating unnecessary perplexities, giving rise 
to false inferences and objections, affording opportu- 
nities of attack, and occasions for defence, which dis- 
appear when the true state of the case is understood. 
The answer of the Westminster Assembly's Shorter 
Catechism, to the question above propounded, may 
itself be cited as an instance in point. " The Script- 
ures principally teach," we are told, " what man is to 
believe concerning God, and what duty God requires 
of man." The statement is too vague and general, 
and is thus fitted to become the cause, if it be not it- 



1 2 MI SCON CEP TIONS. 

self the effect, of misconception. But the crude no- 
tions I have in view are not mere relics of a bygone 
time ; we meet with them in current literature, in such 
popular books, e.g., as Mr. Matthew Arnold's " Liter- 
ature and Dogma," and Mr. W. Rathbone Greg's 
" Creed*of Christendom." In these books attacks are 
made on the faith, which are based on certain assump- 
tions as to the raison d'etre of revelation, and the only- 
effectual method of meeting the assault is to form 
exact ideas on the subject to which these assumptions 
relate. When it is considered how vital the questions 
involved in the controversy are, it will at once be seen 
how very incumbent on the apologist it is to under- 
take that task. They relate to such cardinal topics 
as the possibility and verifiableness of revelation ; the 
function of miracle and prophecy in connection with a 
revelation ; the method of revelation, involving advance 
from rudeness to perfection along a regular course of 
development, the employment of morally defective 
agents, and the adoption of the principle of election, 
that is, the principle' of first bestowing privilege on 
the few in order to the eventual communication of 
the benefit to the many ; and, to specify only one 
other point, the doctrinal significance of revelation. 
Though the Bible is not directly, or in the first rank, 
involved in this discussion (for Revelation must not 
be confounded with its literary record, or the term 
used as a synonym for the Scriptures — of this more 
hereafter), yet it too suffers from misconceptions on 
the fundamental question, What was God's chief end 
in making a supernatural manifestation of Himself in 
the sphere of human history? 

In view of the momentous issues invoLved, the utility 



MISCONCEP TIONS. 



13 



of a careful consideration of the class of topics which 
cluster around the question will, I venture to think, 
be generally conceded. This conviction will support 
me in the endeavour to execute the task which I have 
taken in hand, not without diffidence and a grave 
sense of responsibility. What I aim at is not ency- 
clopaedic completeness, but to suggest some service- 
able thoughts on the most pressing matters. To 
achieve even this modest piece of work in a slight and 
sketchy manner will require six lengthy chapters. I 
devote this first introductory one to a statement of 
the principal misconceptions which have been or still 
are entertained on the subject of our study. 

These misconceptions, then, fall into two general 
classes. First, there are those which take a theoreti- 
cal or doctrinaire view of revelation, and next, there 
are those which go to the opposite extreme and take 
an exclusively practical or ethical view of the same 
subject. This classification does not resolve itself into 
a distinction between the views of believers and those 
of unbelievers respectively ; on the contrary, believers 
and unbelievers or freethinkers may be found on the 
same side. Especially does this hold good, as we 
shall see immediately, in reference to the doctrinaire 
class of ideas. 

Common to all patrons of theoretical or doctrinaire 
conceptions are these two opinions ; that Revelation 
is to be identified with the Bible, and that the Bible 
was given by God to men for the purpose of com- 
municating doctrinal instruction on certain topics of 
importance. This may be said to be the old view 
held in common both by believer and by infidel. The 
points on which those who adopted this view differed, 
2 



H 



MISCONCEP TIONS. 



had reference to the subjects on which instruction was 
supposed to be given, and, as connected with that, the 
extent and character of the information vouchsafed. 
The sober, intermediate, what we may call the ortho- 
dox, opinion was that the knowledge communicated 
in the Scriptures relates to God and to human duty 
and destiny, and that it contains numerous items of 
information which could have been obtained from no 
other source. From this medium position some di- 
verged by excess, others by defect. The excess con- 
sisted in looking on the Bible as a book containing 
miscellaneous information, of a more or less curious 
character, on all sorts of subjects ; not merely on God, 
duty, the future life, and such moral and religious top- 
ics, but on the secrets of nature, the problems of phi- 
losophy, the constitution of the heavenly world, etc. 
The extreme instance of this unlimited construction 
of the term Revelation is to be found in the Jewish 
Kabbala, which, by an arbitrary and grotesque system 
of interpretation, converted the Old Testament into 
a book of science, philosophy, and magic, as well as a 
book of moral law and religion. Milder examples of 
the Kabbalistic treatment of Scripture (using the epi- 
thet with reference, not to the method 'of interpretation, 
but to the character of the results obtained) have been 
supplied in more recent times by those who have been 
of opinion that the sacred Book, though not meant 
principally to teach the science of nature, yet contains 
latent in its pages important scientific hints, and al- 
ways expresses itself in reference to natural phe- 
nomena with scientific accuracy. The conflicts in 
which this view has involved believers in Revelation 
and science in its onward progress are so familiar to 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 1 5 

all that it is not necessary to speak of them particu- 
larly. Suffice it to say, that these collisions have 
gradually taught faith the necessity of caution in the 
claims which she advances in behalf of the Bible, and 
led to the general adoption of the position that the 
revelation contained in the holy Book relates to dis- 
tinctively moral and religious truth, that it is not in- 
tended to make known the secrets of the universe, 
and that when these Divine writings have occasion 
to speak of natural phenomena they do so, not in sci- 
entific, but in popular language. The old Kabbal- 
istic idea, however, is not yet quite extinct ; it lingers 
still, for venerable error dies hard ; one meets with it 
now and then in odd corners of literature, and it may 
serve the purpose of a fresh illustration of a trite 
theme, and suffice as comment on the most obvious 
and gross abuse of the Bible, as a supposed repository 
of scientific lore, if I briefly allude to the latest in- 
stance which has come under my observation. I find 
it in a book with which I became acquainted during 
a late visit to America, entitled " Life : its true Gen- 
esis." * In respect of ability and knowledge the book 
is by no means to be despised ; on the contrary, its 
author shows himself to be well acquainted with the 
most recent scientific investigations, hypotheses, and 
discoveries, and discusses these with much acuteness, 
vigour, and spirit, which make the volume altogether 
enjoyable and exhilarating reading. But the writer 
is a dissenter from the views current in scientific cir- 
cles on the origin of life, as taught by Darwin and 



* By Mr. R. W. Wright. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 
New York, 1880. 



1 6 MISCONCEPTIONS. 

others. Dissatisfied with prevalent hypotheses and 
theories, he propounds one of his own which he en- 
deavours to support by an induction of relative facts. 
The facts are interesting, and demand explanation on 
some theory. They are such as this, that when a for- 
est consisting of a particular kind of tree, say pine, is 
cut down, it is succeeded by a growth, not of pine, but 
of oak, and that again by beech. The author believes 
such facts to be inexplicable on any current views of 
the origin of life, and he propounds his own theory to 
account for them, which is, that in the earth there are 
vital germs (not ordinary seeds) of all plants, and that 
whenever the necessary conditions come into exist- 
ence, these germs manifest their presence in the bosom 
of the earth by sending forth a crop of vegetation. 
The germ differs from the seed in this, among other 
respects, in this above all, that a seed is always pre- 
ceded by a plant, whereas the plant is always preceded 
by the vital germ. Now, as to this theory and the 
argument in its support, I am not going to call in 
question the facts alleged ; they may be all true for 
aught I know to the contrary : neither do I quarrel 
with the theory ; it may be as legitimate and as feasi- 
ble as those it is meant to supplant. I certainly think 
neither the facts nor the theory should be treated with 
indifference or contempt ; but, rather, carefully con- 
sidered. The hypothesis is in some respects very 
plausible to say the least, as, e.g., when it deals with 
the question of plant distribution. The " tramp " 
theory of distribution, according to which each plant 
had originally one native place on the earth's surface, 
whence individuals migrated in course of ages, is beset 
with serious difficulties, which the author of the " True 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



17 



Genesis of Life " very acutely exposes. How simple 
and how tempting, in presence of these difficulties, 
the hypothesis that all the word over, the earth is filled 
with vital germs which develop into plants wherever 
the requisite conditions of soil, temperature, and the 
like prevail. Let the theory, therefore, receive, at the 
hands of competent judges, fair and full consideration. 
What I wish to point out is, that the author finds in 
Scripture support for his theory, on which he seems 
to rely more confidently than on all the facts of ob- 
servation adduced. The Scriptural basis is discovered 
in a few Hebrew words in the first chapter of Genesis, 
rendered in our English version, " whose seed is in it- 
self upon the earth," but which we are told ought to 
be rendered "whose germinal principle of life, each 
in itself after its kind, is upon the earth." That is to 
say, we are to understand that the Hebrew word zero, 
is used by the sacred writer to express the scientific 
conception of a germinal principle existing in the earth 
antecedent to all plant life, created there by the energy 
of the Divine Spirit, not the popular idea of seed pro- 
duced first by plants, and from which in turn plants 
are made to grow by the fertilizing influence of the 
soil. Is this probable ? Even if the theory were es- 
tablished I should gravely doubt it, and still incline 
to hold, that in the text referred to, we are to find no 
anticipation of the new theory advanced by Mr. 
Wright, but a reference to the familiar fact that plants 
spring from seeds deposited in the ground. And on 
the other hand, should the theory on examination 
turn out a mistake, the authority of the sacred Book 
will not be compromised, because a sober exegesis 
will adhere to the principle, which painful experience 



1 8 MI SCON CEP TIONS. 

has taught the Church to respect, that on the phe- 
nomena of nature Scripture uniformly speaks not in 
scientific or philosophic, but in popular language. 
This principle may be held fast without prejudice to 
the negative scientific merits of the Bible, such as the 
invariable accuracy of its descriptive references to 
natural phenomena, and the still more important fact 
of its steering clear of all false science, especially from 
any theological and superstitious views of nature, such 
as were current in the ancient world ; a feature which 
comes conspicuously out in the Scripture account of 
creation, compared, e.g., with the Chaldean Genesis, 
a feature, I may add, so remarkable that even free- 
thinkers have been struck with it, though unwilling 
to recognise therein, with believers, the sure trace of 
a Divine guidance helping the sacred writer to avoid 
Pagan error, and in all his representations to walk in 
the light of a pure ethical monotheism. 

In comparison with those who would treat the Bible 
as if it were a repository of miscellaneous information 
on all conceivable subjects, the dogmatist proceeds 
rationally who uses it as a theological text-book given 
for the express purpose of conveying doctrinal in- 
struction on religious and moral themes, which it is 
his business to draw out into distinct propositions, 
and set forth in systematic order. He has the merit, 
at least, of recognising that the proper sphere of Bib- 
lical teaching is to be found in morals and religion. 
But even in his conception there is something out of 
accordance with the actual fact, and unwholesome in 
tendency. In making this statement I am not to be 
understood as denying the competency or utility of 
systematic theology. I not only admit, but strenu- 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. I g 

ously maintain, that revelation has a doctrinal signifi- 
cance ; and I can imagine attempts at exhibiting such 
significance in a systematic way, which should keep 
the chief end of revelation steadily in view, and make 
the whole system of doctrine revolve round it as a 
centre, and assign to each individual truth its place of 
importance in accordance with the nearness or remote- 
ness of its relations to the centre. Such attempts, in- 
deed, have been made, especially in recent times, and 
might be referred to if needful. All I mean to say is, 
that there are certain sins which easily beset one who 
makes revelation consist in the suggestion by the Di- 
vine Spirit, to the minds of apostles and prophets, 
conceptions of ideas and words concerning the dog- 
mas of faith and the rules of conduct.* In the first 
place, the habit of using the Bible as a quarry of proof- 
texts for an elaborate system of doctrine, is apt to 
render the mind insensible to all Biblical material that 
cannot be utilised in that way. The amount of such 
matter is not small. There is much that is beautiful 
and valuable in the sacred writings which cannot be 
manufactured into dogma, and possesses chiefly lit- 
erary or devotional interest. It is to this fact Mr- 
Arnold points in the title which he has given to his 
well-known work on the Bible, " Literature and Dog- 
ma." Then, even that which can.be utilised for dog- 
matic purposes, is likely, in the hands of the dogmatic 
theologian, to lose its living characteristics, and be- 



* In these very terms is Revelation described by Hollaz, a Lu- 
theran divine, who flourished in the 17th century. His words are : 
" Spiritus Sanctus Prophetis et Apostolis conceptus rerum et ver- 
borum de dogmatibus et moribus suggessit." Quoted by Rothe, in 
'Zur Dogmatik," p. 55. 



20 MISCONCEPTIONS. 

come transformed into a dead thing. The Bible is a 
rich wide tract of country, wherein the plants and 
flowers of Divine truth grow in endless profusion and 
picturesque variety. What we find in theological 
systems based on Scripture texts is a Hortus Siccus, 
or collection of dried plants, arranged according to 
their specific resemblances for the purposes of science, 
but with the life pressed out of them. 

Further, the dogmatic mind, as we now conceive of 
it, has no notion of progress in revelation. All Script- 
ure given by inspiration is profitable for doctrine. 
All texts or books of Scripture are alike good for 
the purpose, without distinction of date. The earliest 
books are as available as the latest. It is implied in 
the dogmatic conception of revelation, that salvation 
depends on the knowledge of certain doctrines. That 
being so, the most ancient men of God must be 
assumed to have been in possession of the requisite 
saving knowledge, and traces of such knowledge may 
therefore be looked for even in the oldest parts of 
the Bible. The patriarchs needed the sum of saving 
knowledge, therefore they had it, therefore it may be 
found even in the book of Genesis. How untrue this 
idea of the Bible, according to which the first book is 
as good as the last, progress, growth, development is 
ignored, and Christ is in the Old Testament and in all 
its parts not merely as a germ, but as a tree, does 
not need to be pointed out. It is now generally under- 
stood that even in Revelation the law of progress by 
development obtains, and it is owing to its full recog- 
nition of this truth that the modern science of Bibli- 
cal, as distinct from dogmatic theology, has become 
the fruitful study that it is. 



MISCONCEP TIONS. 2 1 

Another vice of the dogmatic spirit remains to be 
mentioned, viz., the lack of all sense of proportion, 
or of the relative importance of the truths taught in 
Scripture. Every proposition capable of being sub- 
stantiated by clear proof texts, is to be received as 
matter of religious faith. God gave the book to teach 
men certain doctrines, the number of these being 
limited only by the extent to which the process of 
manufacturing theological propositions with proof 
texts attached can be carried ; and who am I that I 
should presume to determine which are fundamental 
and which of secondary moment ? Under the'influ- 
ence of such notions, a dogmatic system, instead of 
being an organism of truth developed out of one great 
ruling thought, is apt to degenerate into a mere en- 
cyclopaedia of theological opinions professing to be 
derived from Scripture, in which the least important 
dogma receives as much prominence as the most fun- 
damental ; so that the student, while in the act of 
learning many truths, is in danger of losing sight of 
the one great truth which sheds its benignant lustre 
on the sacred page ; the truth, viz., that in the Script- 
ures we have the record of the manifestation of a 
gracious purpose evolving itself, in the course of 
ages, and finding its eventual fulfilment in Jesus 
Christ. In this way it may happen to the dogmatic 
student of a completed revelation, to repeat the ex- 
perience of the Jew in studying the Old Testament. 
The Jew searched the Scriptures as one who verily 
believed that in them he should find eternal life ; but 
his search was all but futile, his labour mostly lost, 
because he failed to discern God's chief end in mak- 
ing the revelation of Himself recorded in the Hebrew 



2 2 MI SCON CEP TIONS. 

writings, imagining that it was to be found in the 
law-giving on Sinai ; whereby it came to pass that 
the law eclipsed, to his eye, the purpose of grace 
running all through the long ages of preparation, and 
blinded his mind even to its sunlight-glory as it 
shone in the face of Christ. The melancholy failure 
of the people to whom were given the oracles of God 
to appreciate the design of the gift, supplies a most 
significant historical illustration of the serious conse- 
quences such shortcoming may entail. Let us not 
imagine it is a lesson which does not concern us. 

The seventeenth century was the great Protestant 
dogmatic epoch, during which the conception of the 
Bible just animadverted on was everywhere domi- 
nant. In the eighteenth century, on the other hand, 
we meet on every side a spirit of reaction against 
theological dogmatism. The dogma-building spirit 
had done its work amidst much controversy, and with 
incredible toil it had created vast systems of divinity, 
embodied in huge tomes which it would take half a 
lifetime to read. And the task, when done, turned 
out to be a thankless one. The world seemed weary 
of theological controversy, and turned away from the 
learned tomes with apathy, almost with loathing. 
Deism, Illuminism, Auf kalrung succeeded to scholas- 
tic orthodoxy, and taught, to willing ears, that the 
vast structure of supernatural and unintelligible doc- 
trines was really of no practical value, seeing the 
essence of religion consisted in a few simple truths 
which all could understand, and which commended 
themselves to every unsophisticated mind. But while 
the dogmas were given up, the dogmatic conception 
of Revelation was retained. That conception was a 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



23 



legacy eighteenth-century free-thought inherited from 
seventeenth-century orthodoxy, which shaped its way 
of regarding the Bible, and which it even turned into 
a weapon of assault against the faith in a Divinely 
revealed religion. The deist, not less than the dog- 
matist, had a doctrinaire idea of revelation. He 
could not think of any purpose God could have in 
view in giving a revelation, other than to communi- 
cate instruction. The point on which he differed 
from the dogmatist was the nature and amount of the 
instruction communicated. Men under the influence 
of the eighteenth-century Zeitgeist, whether bejievers 
or unbelievers, were disposed to reduce the truths 
which God could be supposed to teach men in a 
special revelation to a very small number indeed — to 
three in fact, which may be called the Deistic Trinity. 
These three were— that there is a God just and, above 
all, beneficent ; that moral obligations are to be 
acknowledged and obeyed, or the infinite nature of 
duty; and that man is destined to immortality. If 
God gave a revelation to man, it must have been to 
republish and enforce these fundamental truths of 
natural religion ; whatever more was found in any 
pretended revelation was either false or of subordi- 
nate importance. Here was the opposite extreme to 
Kabbalism; diverging from the via media of dog- 
matic orthodoxy on the side of defect, as far as the 
Rabbinical idea of revelation diverged therefrom on 
the side of excess. All three agreed that the Bible 
was a scholastic book ; but the Kabbalist thought 
it taught everything, the dogmatist confined its 
teaching pretty much to theology, and the deist 
was of opinion that it taught next to nothing, at 



24 MISCONCEPTIONS. 

most only the few elementary truths of natural 
religion. 

The most genial and friendly representative of the 
deistical tendency may be' found in Lessing, the 
most cultured and influential apostle of German 
Illuminism. By the bent of his spirit, Lessing was 
a philosophic sceptic or free-thinker, but he did not 
assume an attitude of hostility or unbelief .towards 
revealed religion. On the contrary, he professed to 
believe in Revelation, and set himself to discover its 
chief end and contents. He developed his views on 
these points in the well-known tract, entitled " The 
Education of the Human Race." God's aim in giving 
to the race the Bible, he held, was to educate it out 
of moral childhood and rudeness into manhood, and 
He sought to do this by communicating to men the 
knowledge of truths which reason could find out for 
itself, but not easily or soon. Education, in general, 
gives a man nothing which he could not have from 
himself, but it gives it sooner and easier. Even so 
revelation gives to man no truths which his reason 
would not eventually discover, but it gave and gives 
the most important of these truths earlier. The truths 
of chief moment which God taught the race in an order 
determined by the capacity of the pupil were — the 
unity of God, presented first in the form of belief in a 
national God, Jehovah; then, finally, in the form of 
a pure ethical monotheism learned by Israel from the 
wise Persians while in exile ; the sum of duty set forth 
in the Decalogue, whose precepts were enforced by a 
promise of long life in the land of Canaan ; and, 
finally, the doctrine of immortality communicated first 
to a select few in Old Testament times, and at length 



MISCONCEP TIONS. 



25 



made the property of the million by Jesus Christ. In 
this process of moral and religious education the Old 
Testament served the purpose of a primer, and the 
New Testament was the second lesson-book, put into 
the child's hands when it had outgrown the first. 
Both were good in their place and time, but both are 
destined to be superseded when the child reaches 
manhood. Then comes in the everlasting gospel of 
reason, when men shall see without aid truths which, 
in earlier ages, God beneficently taught men by means 
of the sacred school-books ; and when they shall have 
the law so written in the heart, that they will do the 
right without any hope of reward, whether temporal or 
eternal, as an inducement ; when, nevertheless, though 
no longer needed as a motive to well doing, the faith 
in immortality shall be firmly rooted in the spirit. 

The theory of Revelation now briefly sketched is 
very attractive, and not without some elements of 
truth. It supplies a credible motive for Divine 
action ; for it is quite conceivable that God should 
communicate to men, by special revelation, truths of 
the moral reason which, in the course of ages, they 
could eventually discover, but not till much later 
than they actually become acquainted with them 
through Divine aid, in oder that their higher educa- 
tion might be thereby accelerated. Then the notion 
of education, though not exhausting the idea of reve- 
lation, does enter into it as an element. When God 
entered upon the process of self-manifestation, of 
which we have the literary monument in the Script- 
ures, He did take in hand the moral and religious 
education of mankind. Even the idea of the lesson- 
books being superseded when they have served their 



26 MI SCON CEP TIONS. 

purpose has a certain germ of truth in it. That idea 
is borrowed, we may say, from the Apostle Paul, who 
justified the abrogation of the Mosaic law by com- 
paring it to the system of tutors and governors to 
which the heir of an inheritance is subject only till 
the time of his majority has arrived. Lessing was 
mistaken only in assuming that the time might come 
when Christianity itself, as taught in the New Testa- 
ment, should be superseded by the religion of reason, 
even as the Jewish religion was superseded by it ; 
whereas, according to the teaching of the New Tes- 
tament, and in truth, Christianity is the perfect 
religion; God's last, because His full, adequate, abso- 
lutely true word to men ; which cannot be outgrown 
in thought as the world advances in wisdom, any 
more than the Son, by whom that last word was 
spoken, can be outgrown in moral worth. But it is 
important to note the source of his mistake. It lay 
in this, that his idea of revelation was exclusively 
pedagogic. The Bible consists of two lesson-books, 
which the pupil outgrows one after the other, as 
pupils outgrow all school-books. He learns his 
lessons about the unity of God, the moral law, and 
the life to come, and goes his way, and thinks no 
more about the primer and the second book. But 
suppose that revelation consisted in something much 
higher than moral education, even in the manifesta- 
tion of a redemptive purpose, in the exhibition to our 
faith of God as the God of Grace, so supplying not 
only knowledge of duty, but power to become sons 
of God ; and suppose that in the Bible we have the 
record of such a manifestation and exhibition, — could 
we then think of outgrowing the holy writings as 



MISCONCEPTIONS. 27 

worn-out school-books ? As well might we think 
of outgrowing the sun ; for Christ is the Sun of our 
souls, because He is the Saviour of our souls, and no 
one who recognises in Him the Redeemer will ever 
dream of the possibility of His being superseded. 
Nor will the book which bears witness to His re- 
deeming love ever lose its interest, or its value as an 
atmosphere through which the rays of the spiritual 
Sun are diffused abroad over the world. Only such 
as think of Christ as merely a Teacher, and of 
Christianity as a system of ideas, will imagine that 
they can now dispense with both Christ and the New 
Testament. Even they are mistaken in their fancy. 
They are not so independent as they think. Some 
Christian light may indeed remain in their minds 
after they have thrown Christ and the gospel aside ; 
it is, however, but as the twilight which remains in 
the sky after the sun has gone down, destined soon 
to fade into darkness.* 



* " If Christianity be the revealed, and in principle completed, 
religion of redemption, and therefore the completion of all relig- 
ion, an advance of religion beyond Christianity, or a perfectibility, 
or completion of Christianity itself, is neither possible nor neces- 
sary ; therefore attempts of this kind lead away from religion in 
order to set in its place philosophy and esthetic for the benefit of 
demigods, who no more, like us common men, need religion" 
(Alex. Schweitzer, "Die Christliche Glaubenslehre, vol. iii. p. 5). 
This writer, in the same volume, p. 31, says again: "If Chris- 
tianity were not the religion of redemption itself, as living piety, 
but only the doctrine of the same, we could cherish for Christ 
essentially only such a feeling as we entertain towards other great 
Church teachers ; viz., thankfulness for instruction given at a cer- 
tain time, and for the spirit with which it was communicated in 
spite of powerful opponents." These views are the more worthy 
of note that the author by no means occupies an orthodox stand- 
point. 



2 8 MISCONCEP TIONS. 

If in Lessing we see one who, while a true child 
of an unbelieving time, still endeavoured to recon- 
cile faith in a doctrinal revelation with the prevalent 
theological liberalism, we find in another man, whose 
name is closely associated with his, an example of 
a free-thinker, using orthodox conceptions of reve- 
lation to subvert the orthodox faith in revelation. 
I refer to Reimarus of Hamburg, author of an un- 
published work entitled " A Defence of the Rational 
Worshippers of God," from which Lessing extracted 
the pieces which he gave to the world under the 
name of "The Wolfenbiittel Fragments." This man, 
to whom Lessing, and more recently Strauss, has 
given greater prominence than he deserves, claims 
our attention chiefly on account of the principles 
on which his attack on revealed religion is based. 
He commenced his inquiries into the claim of the 
Bible to be a Divine revelation, by laying down these 
two positions : (i) that if a revelation was to be 
made it would be given in the form of a system of 
doctrine expressed in precise terms ; and, (2) that 
men of irreproachable lives would be selected to 
be the medium of communication. In the preface 
of his work, according to Strauss, who took the 
pains to prepare and publish a digest of its contents, 
he gives an account of the origin of his doubts 
concerning the truth of revealed religion. The first 
thing that caused him to stumble was the fact that 
the Bible is not a doctrinal compendium. If God 
were to favour mankind with supernatural instruc- 
tion for their salvation, He would, without doubt, 
adopt the most convenient form of an orderly and 
clear exposition, in which all that pertained to a 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



2 9 



doctrine of faith, or a system of morals, was brought 
together and expressed in a definite manner, and 
not scattered here and there, or confusedly mixed, 
or left vague and darkly worded. We observe in 
this assumption an instructive illustration of the 
way in which men's minds may be biassed in 
religion by their philosophy. Like most members 
of the Illuminist fraternity, Reimarus was a Wolfian 
in philosophy, and an admirer of the demonstrative 
mathematical method of his master, and hence he 
was prejudiced against the Bible, because forsooth 
its Divine Author had not adopted the style of a phi- 
losopher belonging to the Wolfian school. Another 
thing which greatly scandalized the doubter, was the 
character of the people whom God chose to be the 
recipients of revelation, and of the so-called men of 
God whom He used as His instruments, or who figure 
prominently as worthies in the Scriptures. He could 
not conceive God choosing so stiff-necked, ignoble, 
and perverse a race to be a peculiar people in prefer- 
ence to other more teachable and gifted nations ; and 
in the actions of the Bible characters — the patriarchs, 
Moses, Samuel, David, etc. — he found traits which 
made it impossible for him to regard them as men 
after God's heart, and messengers of His revelation. 

It is easy to understand how one coming to the ex- 
amination of the Bible with such assumptions in his 
mind could not fail to find in it many stumbling-blocks. 
For in truth the sacred Book is as far as possible from 
being a systematic compendium of religious instruc- 
tion. No book in the world has less the appearance 
of bearing that character. It is most interesting, ex- 
cellent, edifying " literature," but it is not a book of 



30 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



" dogma," whatever dogmas may be extracted from 
it by legitimate exegesis. So far are the recipients of 
revelation from being men whom God is using for con- 
veying doctrinal instruction of a formal character to 
the world, that some of them seem to receive little 
teaching themselves, and to give none at all to others. 
The patriarchs for example : what do they learn from 
God, or what contribution do they make to the com- 
pendium of religious doctrine ? Why the communi- 
cations made to them refer, as Reimarus observed, to 
his amazement, not to abstract topics, such as the 
unity of God, or the immortality of the soul, but 
rather to such gross worldly matters as children and 
lands ; and instead of going about as missionaries 
teaching the true religion, their whole concern seems 
to be about flocks and herds and wells, and marriages 
and offspring. Most perplexing behaviour, truly, on 
the part of men who are supposed to be God's agents 
in the work of communicating to the world a doctrinal 
revelation ! But to infer therefrom that no Divine 
revelation has taken place, is somewhat precipitate. 
What if the proper inference were that the conception 
of revelation, cherished by Reimarus in common with 
the orthodox, from whom he received it by tradi- 
tion, was an altogether mistaken one? What if the 
revelation consisted not so much in the communica- 
tion of a body of truth, as in the intimation of a gra- 
cious purpose ? In that case the prominence given 
to such matters as an heir, or a land, which seems so 
utterly out of place in a doctrinaire revelation, may 
be found not altogether inexplicable. In a similar 
way, revision of the idea of revelation might go far to 
remove the scandals arising out of the lives of the 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 3 1 

men of revelation. It certainly must be admitted 
that they were far enough from being perfect men. 
No need for a microscope to discover faults in most 
of them ; no need for such elaborate efforts to convict 
many of them of grievous shortcomings, as Reimarus 
makes, till his reader is wearied, not to say disgusted. 
The fact stares one in the face. But what then ; does 
grievous faultiness disqualify men for being the agents 
of Divine revelation? Must God in giving a revela- 
tion play the Pharisee, and out of a regard to His dig- 
nity have to do only with perfect Characters ? Or is 
it due to the world that its teachers should be so very 
far above the general level in virtue ? There might 
be something to be said for these positions if revela- 
tion consisted in communicating ideas of reason, eth- 
ical precepts, or maxims of wisdom. But what if the 
revelation consist in a self-manifestation of God as the 
God of grace ? Then we shall not wonder at the Di- 
vine Being condescending to have intimate relations 
with erring mortals, or making known His will for the 
world's redemption, by men participating, more or less, 
in the world's sin. 

The employment of a doctrinaire conception of rev- 
elation as a weapon of assault against faith in a super- 
naturally revealed religion is a device not yet anti- 
quated. We find this same conception used to assail 
the possibility and the verifiableness of revelation by 
so respectable and influential a writer as the author 
of " The Creed of Christendom." In that work Mr. 
Greg propounds for discussion the question : Is Chris- 
tianity a revealed religion ? and he thus defines the 
position taken up by those who answer the question 
in the affirmative : " When a Christian affirms Chris- 



32 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



tianity to be a revealed religion, he intends simply 
and without artifice to declare himself that the doc- 
trines and precepts which Christ taught were not 
the production of His own human mind, either in its 
ordinary operations or in its flights of sublimest con- 
templation, but were directly and supernaturally com- 
municated to Him from on high. He means this, or 
he means nothing definable or distinctive." This 
state of the question he afterwards paraphrases thus : 
" It remains therefore a simple question for our con- 
sideration whether the doctrines and precepts taught 
by Jesus are so new, so profound, so perfect, so dis- 
tinctive, so above and beyond parallel, that they could 
not have emanated naturally from a clear, simple, un- 
soiled, un warped, powerful, meditative mind, living 
four hundred years after Socrates and Plato ; brought 
up among the pure Essenes ; nourished on the wis- 
dom of Solomon, the piety of David, the poetry of 
Isaiah ; elevated by the knowledge, and illuminated 
by the love of the one true God." These two extracts 
clearly set forth the author's point of view. Revela- 
tion consists in the supernatural communication of 
truth which the human mind could not attain of itself, 
and there is no reason to believe that Jesus could not, 
in His position and with His training, arrive in a nat- 
ural way at the thoughts embodied in His recorded 
sayings ; in other words, no reason to regard Jesus 
otherwise than as one of the world's wise men. But 
Mr. Greg goes further than this. He not only holds 
that as matter of fact no supernatural teaching was 
necessary to give Jesus His wisdom, but strives to 
prove that supernatural teaching in general is impos- 
sible, or at least unverifiable. This he does by means 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 3 3 

of the two following questions : Can the human mind 
receive an idea which it could not originate ? and how 
can a man distinguish between an idea revealed to 
him and an idea conceived by him ? The questions 
are rather loosely put. It is assumed, for instance, 
that an idea and a truth are the same thing. The 
author indeed affirms that they are. " A truth," he 
says, " is only an idea, or a combination of ideas, which 
approves itself to us." But a truth is something more 
than a combination of agreeable ideas. An illustration 
will best show this. God is one idea, love is another ; 
the combination of these two ideas is agreeable to our 
hearts ; but that is a very different thing from know- 
ing it to be true, to be a real objective truth that God 
is love, as the Apostle John affirms. And this illus- 
tration may also help us to understand how we may 
be able, without Divine aid, to conceive and even to 
combine ideas, and yet may require such aid to regard 
the combination as objective truth. I do not need Di- 
vine revelation to give me the idea of God ; as little do 
I need such help to give me the idea of love. I can 
also, without supernatural succour, combine these two 
ideas. I can imagine God being love. To do that is 
easy, but, alas, to believe that God is love is not so 
easy. After I have conceived such a thing as a pos- 
sibility, I stand very much in need of assurance that 
my conception is not only a possibility, but a fact. 
Suppose now w r e translate Mr. Greg's question into 
accurate language, and ask : Can the human mind re- 
ceive a truth by revelation which it could not certainly 
know to be true otherwise, though it might be able to 
conceive of its possibility ? Why not ? Where is the 
difficulty? The puzzle disappears as soon as it is 



34 MISCONCEPTIONS. 

stated in proper terms. To convert possibilities, con- 
ceived but not firmly believed, into certainties, was 
one grand design of revelation. And now observe, 
with reference to Mr. Greg's second question, how 
this is done. Take again the infinitely momentous 
truth that God is love. How am I to be assured of 
that truth with a measure of assurance far surpassing 
that attainable by the light of nature, which confess- 
edly leaves Divine love, to a large extent, problemat- 
ical ? How shall I know, e.g., whether love means for 
God what it means among men, viz., a spirit which 
makes a man willing to sacrifice himself for another, 
as Alcestis sacrificed herself for her husband ? I can 
conceive such a thing as possible. I cannot indeed 
think of God as love without the conception entering 
into my mind. But from the conception to the belief 
what a distance ! Is it possible that God can or will 
sacrifice Himself, or stoop to be a burden-bearer to 
His own creatures? How shall I know, save by God 
doing the thing, and so showing me that love is the 
reality for Him that it is for all the moral heroes who 
sacrifice themselves for others ? And the doing of it 
is the revelation. Christ's death on the cross is the 
most important part of His revelation ; far more im- 
portant than His words of wisdom, precious as these 
are. And the radical error of Mr. Greg is, that he 
takes account only of the latter, leaving out of view 
the revelation which Christ made in His life, in His 
actions, and, above all, in His passion. It is the old 
traditional error of a doctrinaire conception of revela- 
tion reproduced in our age, and made the basis of an 
ingenious attempt to demonstrate the impossibility 
of revelation, which is seen to be inept so soon as the 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



35 



subject in debate is rightly defined. That Mr. Greg's 
attack would be valid even against revelation as con- 
ceived by himself, I am not to be understood as ad- 
mitting. All I mean now to point out is, that there 
is a way of regarding revelation, with reference to 
which his argument does not even possess plausibility. 
In proceeding now to giye some account of the 
opinions of those who have taken a purely practical 
or ethical view of the chief end of revelation, I must 
go as far back as the seventeenth century to find the 
first influential representative of this tendency in post- 
reformation times. The man to whom must be as- 
signed this important position is the famous Amster- 
dam Jew, Benedict Spinoza, justly regarded as the 
father of modern pantheism. Spinoza was not only 
the first, but also the most thorough-going exponent 
of the purely ethical conception of the aim of the 
Bible, which is so much in favour with many at the 
present time ; and on this account, as well as out of 
regard to his general position in the history of 
modern speculative and theological thought, he is 
entitled to very special attention. The fact of his 
belonging to the seventeenth century, and to Holland, 
readily suggests the conjecture that his peculiar way 
of viewing revelation may have been due to reaction 
against the dogmatic spirit of the age, which mani- 
fested itself with special intensity in that country in 
connection with the disputes between the Calvinists 
and the Armiriians. Such, accordingly, we know 
from Spinoza himself to have been the actual fact. 
In the Tract at tts theologico-politicus, the writing in 
w T hich his opinions on the present subject are set 
forth, published anonymously in 1670, the author 



36 MISCONCEPTIONS. 

clearly explains the occasion and design of his work. 
In the preface he tells that he had observed, with 
pain, the grievous evils of religious controversy, as 
illustrated in all ecclesiastical history, and especially 
in the recent dispute between the Arminians and 
Calvinists (which led to the assembling of the Synod 
of Dort) : how in such .disputes natural reason was 
despised, and treated as the fountain of impiety, and 
human opinions were taken for Divine truth, and 
credulity deemed faith, and philosophical controver- 
sies keenly agitated in Church and State ; whence 
arose savage hatreds and dissensions, breeding sedition 
and schism. Observing these melancholy phenomena, 
it occurred to him to ask whether they did not all arise 
out of an illegitimate use of Scripture, as an authority 
in matters of philosophical and theological opinion in 
which reason should be left to its liberty. Men were 
fiercely wrangling about predestination and election, 
the depravity of human nature, irresistible grace, and 
the like topics. What if the Bible was never intended 
to decide such questions ; what if the opinions it con- 
tains bearing thereon be not even mutually consist- 
ent, and are to be taken simply for what they are 
worth, as the personal opinions of the particular 
writers speaking according to the best light they 
possessed ? With this idea in his mind he resolved, 
he tells us, to examine Scripture anew with unbiassed 
mind, and to affirm nothing concerning it, and admit 
nothing as to its teaching, which was not in accord- 
ance with its ascertained character. His enquiry re- 
lated to such topics as these : What was prophecy, 
and how did God reveal Himself to the prophets, and 
on what ground were they acceptable to God, whether 



MISCONCEP TIONS. 



37 



because of the truth or value of their thoughts of God 
or of nature, or simply because of their piety ; in 
what sense were the Hebrews an elect people ; whether 
miracles, so-called, happened contrary to the order of 
nature, and whether they teach the existence and 
providence of God more certainly and clearly than 
the things which happen in the course of nature, and 
whose causes are known ; whether there was anything 
in Scripture to justify the vilification of the human 
intellect as corrupt and blind, a question whose settle- 
ment depended on this other ; whether the religious 
or Divine law revealed by prophets and apostles was 
different from that which the natural light of reason 
teaches ? On all these questions he arrived at con- 
clusions radically diverse from those current in the 
Church. The authority of the prophets, he found, 
had weight only in those things which bear on life 
and morals : their opinions no way concern us. These 
Hebrew prophets, on an examination of their history 
and writings, appeared to be men of singular virtue, 
who cultivated piety with great devoutness, and 
hence, in Bible language, were said to be filled with 
the Spirit of God, and to be men of God, just as a 
stately cedar is called a cedar of God. Their chief in- 
tellectual gift was a lively imagination. They were 
not endowed with better minds than other men, and 
therefore it is an entire mistake to seek in their writ- 
ings wisdom and the knowledge of natural and spirit- 
ual things. All that we can learn from them is what 
bears on the fear of God or obedience ; in reference 
to all else for anything the prophets teach, we may 
believe what we please. This is apparent when we 
consider the grounds of prophetic certitude, which 
3 



3 8 MI SCON CEP TIONS. 

were these three : a vivid imagination of the things 
" revealed," a sign specially given for the prophet's 
satisfaction, and, above all, a mind steadily inclined 
to goodness. The certainty thence arising was only 
subjective. The second condition, indeed, may seem 
to carry with it objective certitude, but it does not, 
because the signs vouchsafed were adapted to the 
capacity and opinions of the particular prophet, so 
\J that what would convince one might fail to convince 
another. Even the "revelations" made to the 
prophets, were adapted not only to the temperament? 
the imagination, and the outward circumstances, but 
even to the peculiar, and it might be erroneous, 
opinions of the individual. That the prophets held 
erroneous opinions, and did not agree in their 
opinions, is apparent from the record. The con- 
clusion which results from all the facts, is, that we 
must not expect to find in the prophetic writings, 
that is in the Hebrew Scriptures generally, philo- 
sophically "accurate views concerning God, but merely 
such as tend to promote piety and morality, the 
prophets not being raised by their prophetic gift 
above liability to ignorance and error in regard to 
matters of speculation, which have no bearing on 
charity and practice. The author thought himself 
justified in drawing from the phenomena a similar 
inference in reference to the New Testament writings. 
The apostles wrote as doctors, not as prophets sup- 
porting their statements on a Thus saith the Lord, 
and they differed from each other in their views. 
They are not to be blamed for mixing up religion 
with speculation, for the gospel was new, and they 
were obliged to gain for it access to' men's minds by 



MISCONCEPTIONS. 39 

accommodating themselves to contemporary thought. 
But we may now disregard Paul's philosophy and 
theology, and attend only to the few elementary 
truths in the teaching of which prophets, apostles, 
and Christ are all at one. These truths Spinoza 
pronounced to be neither more nor less than the 
doctrines of natural religion, which the much decried 
reason teaches us by its own light. 

It does not need to be pointed out to what theory 
of revelation these free and frankly expressed opinions 
conduct. The substance and the design of revelation 
have respect merely to piety and obedience. The 
Bible was not intended to teach, and does not in fact 
teach, any definite doctrines concerning God, or man, 
or the world ; but has for its sole object to promote 
the practice of godliness, justice, and charity. The 
writers of the Bible did not themselves all hold the 
same opinions, and therefore it is vain to seek from 
their writings one uniform system of dogmas. A man 
may make a very wise, good use of these writings, and 
be a true believer in the Scripture sense, and yet hold 
all manner of opinions, theistic or pantheistic, con- 
cerning God. Faith consists in cherishing such sen- 
timents concerning God as are necessary to and in- 
volved in obedience. It requires, not true, but pious 
beliefs. To the catholic faith belong no dogmas con- 
cerning which there can be controversy amongst hon- 
est men ; in particular, no such dogmas as those re- 
lating to predestination or election. It is idle to ap- 
peal to the Scriptures to decide the controversy con- 
cerning election. Election, in the Old Testament, 
simply means that God chose for Israel a particular 
spot of the earth wherein they might live in safety 



4Q 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



and comfort. The Hebrew people were elected sim- 
ply to outward privilege, not to exceptional knowl- 
edge of God, or to be made in an exclusive sense a 
holy people. In the New Testament there is a deeper 
doctrine of election, taught especially in Paul's epis- 
tles. But then Paul speaks as a theological doctor, 
and we must take his doctrine for what it is worth. 

One wonders that a man holding such views should 
continue to speak of a revelation, or to believe in it 
in any special, distinctive sense. Indeed, we know 
that with his speculative opinions Spinoza could not 
believe in a revelation, in the sense of a communica- 
tion of truth to men by the living God with the in- 
tention of promoting their happiness. He was a 
Pantheist, and believed in no living God, in no God 
capable of cherishing intentions or performing special 
acts. But he does not say so plainly in the Tractatus, 
but keeps his philosophy in the background, and ac- 
commodates his language to theistic opinions that he 
may reason with Theists on their own terms. Yet 
his speculative bias is plain enough from many indi- 
cations, and very specially from the views which he 
expresses on the subject of miracles. These are in 
brief as follows : A miracle, in the sense of an event 
contrary to nature, is impossible, the order of nature 
being fixed and immutable. The so-called miracles 
of Scripture, if real occurrences, were simply events 
whose natural causes are unknown. If from the nat- 
ure of the case any recorded event could not possibly 
have had a natural cause ; e.g., the resurrection of a 
dead man, then the narrative must be held to be false, 
and probably added to the sacred writings by sacri- 
legious hands. From miracles, however conceived, 



MISCONCEPTIONS. 41 

whether as events contrary to nature, or as events due 
to natural but obscure, unknown causes, we can learn 
nothing, either as to the being, or the essence, or the 
character of God. They are simply prodigies or ac- 
cidents without significance. We can know God only 
through the fixed course of nature, whose laws are 
the expression of His eternal will and decrees. Of 
course, on this view, the miraculous element in Script- 
ure, so far from being the medium of a very special 
revelation, is no revelation at all. Nay, on such a 
view of the miraculous, the very word revelation, as 
applied to Scripture, is evacuated of meaning, and its 
use ought to be discontinued, as fitted to foster de- 
lusion. For a special revelation, made with a definite 
purpose, is essentially miraculous ; and if miracle is 
to be discarded, words which imply miracle should be 
discarded also. In the work we have been speaking 
of, Spinoza did not choose to be thoroughly self-con- 
sistent. He preferred to occupy pro tempore the po- 
sition of one who believed the Bible to be the word 
of God, given for a special purpose. But he found 
himself somewhat at a loss to tell what the precise 
end served was. He supposes some one to ask the 
question, What is the use of the Bible, seeing we can- 
not learn from it any definite doctrine concerning the 
nature and attributes of God, but only a few element- 
ary truths of morality and religion, such as the light 
of reason can reveal to thoughtful minds? And he 
gives this somewhat enigmatical answer : " Since we 
cannot perceive by the light of nature that simple 
obedience is the way to salvation, and that revelation 
alone teaches us that that is accomplished by the sin- 
gular grace of God, which we cannot attain by reason, 



42 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



hence it follows that Scripture has brought an exceed- 
ingly great consolation to mortals. For while all 
without exception can obey, there are comparatively 
very few who acquire the habit of virtue by the sole 
guidance of reason ; and therefore, unless we had the 
testimony of Scripture, we might doubt concerning 
the salvation of almost all men." These sentences 
produce the impression that their author was puzzled 
to discover a presentable ground for the necessity of 
revelation. His real opinion, doubtless, was, that a 
revelation was unnecessary, as, on his philosophy, we 
know it is impossible. 

In the century following that in which Spinoza lived, 
the same tendency to connect the idea of revelation 
exclusively with practice was favoured by the founder 
of the critical philosophy and his disciples. Kant and 
Fichte were specially conspicuous advocates of the 
doctrine that the proper subject of all revelation is 
law. The former restricted the sphere of revelation 
still further, by conceiving of the laws specially re- 
vealed as statutory or positive precepts, in contradis- 
tinction from moral laws. The communication of 
such positive precepts by special revelation he repre- 
sented as made necessary by the weakness of human 
nature. Not otherwise can a kingdom of God, or a 
society of men associated together for ethical ends, 
come into actual being. Such a society is very need- 
ful to help individuals to fight with evil and to do 
good ; and if all men earnestly bent on obeying the 
law written on the heart were to unite together for 
mutual aid in the culture of morality, they would con- 
stitute a kingdom of God, or Church. But unfortu- 
nately men have never been able to establish an eth- 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



43 



ical society on the basis of the dictates of pure, prac- 
tical reason. They have ever been hard to persuade 
that a good life is all that God demands of them ; they 
have imagined that their duty to Him must consist 
in some special service which He requires of them. 
But we can learn what service God requires of us, how 
He would have us honour Him, — so far as this honour 
goes beyond our general moral obligation, — only by 
an express declaration of His will. This declaration, 
when made, is a revelation, the contents of which con- 
sist in a body of positive precepts relating to religious 
ritual. The abstract possibility of such a revelation 
Kant did not deny; but to maintain its reality in any 
given case he regarded as foolhardy, or as probably 
an act of intentional usurpation on the part of one 
who wished to increase his influence and authority 
over the people. Belief in such a revelation comes 
early in a people's history, and is made possible by 
their moral rudeness, of which their wise men take 
advantage to deceive them for their good.* 

Fichte, on the other hand, conceived of revelation 
as having for its proper sphere moral law. The design 
of all possible revelation, in his view, could only be 
to bring the claims of the moral law to bear with 
increased power upon the minds of men in a weak 
rude moral condition. I*i his first publication, entitled 
An Attempt at a Criticism of all Revelation, which 
had for its aim to apply the principles of the Kantian 
philosophy to the subject of revealed religion, Fichte 
defined the idea of revelation as the idea of an 



* Vide " Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blosen Vernunft," 
III. i. 5; also Zeller, " Geschichte der deutschen Philosophic," 
p. 500. 



44 MISCONCEPTIONS. 

appearance produced by the Divine causality in the 
world of sense, whereby God makes Himself known 
as moral Legislator. Such an appearance he admitted 
to be physically possible, and, when taking place for 
the purpose of educating morally rude men capable 
of being influenced only by what addressed itself 
to their senses, not unworthy of God ; for, though it 
may seem to degrade God by making Him a peda- 
gogue, yet in truth nothing is unworthy of God that 
is not contrary to the moral law. The Divine Being 
may humble Himself in the interests of morality ; and 
if it be found impossible in any other way to promote 
the moral education of the race than by a promulga- 
tion of duty amid miraculous accompaniments fitted 
to awaken awe, right reason cannot object to Deity 
condescending to man's need. This theory seems to 
have the merit of making room for at least such a 
revelation of law as that made to Israel on Sinai. 
The practical conclusion, however, of Fichte's criti- 
cism is a sceptical one. While the abstract possibility 
of a revelation is admitted, its verifiableness is in 
effect denied. Revelation, in Fichte's philosophy, as 
in Kant's, comes to mean belief in revelation ; and 
the belief has its origin, not in any objective Divine 
manifestation, but in devices of wise men to make an 
impression on the minds of tjie multitude. It is the 
old story of deceit for a beneficent purpose.* 

Coming down, now, to our own time, we find the • 
ethical view of revelation, so called, espoused and 
advocated with literary grace and persuasiveness by 
Mr. Matthew Arnold in the work already referred to. 
Mr. Arnold's way of regarding the Bible has more 



Vide Fichte's Werke, 5ter Band, p. 81. 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



45 



affinity with Spinoza's than with that of ihe critical 
philosophers, in so far as it insists on the general 
tendency of the Scriptures to promote the habit 
of virtue, rather than on any special instruction 
which they convey on the rules of conduct. Of 
Spinoza Mr. Arnold remarks, that he is coming 
more and more to the front. The observation is 
just ; many things confirm it : the appearance of new 
editions of his works, of translations in our language 
of some of his particular treatises, such as the 
"Tractatus," of which I have already given some 
account, and of original studies in his life and 
philosophy ;* the increasing prevalence of Pantheistic 
modes of thought more or less traceable to his 
influence ; the prominent notice taken of his opinions 
on miracles and other topics in Apologetic literature. 
In one sense, the more he comes to the front the 
better, for to know Spinoza is the best way to under- 
stand modern philosophy and theology. In his 
" Ethics " we find a key which opens to us many 
mysteries in such writers as Hegel, Schelling, and 
Schleiermacher, I may indeed almost say in Con- 
tinental systems of speculative thought generally. In 
that work is set forth in short compass, and in clear 
incisive style, and without reserve, the doctrines 
whereof more recent systems are to a large extent 
but voluminous and not very intelligible elaborations. 
In Spinoza we are at the sources of the Nile, starting 
from which we may with tolerable certainty track the 



* The most recent work on Spinoza's life and philosophy, is that 
by Pollock, published in 1880. In the last chapter of this work the 
author gives an account of the influence of Spinoza on modern 
thought. 



3* 



46 MISCONCEPTIONS. 

downward course of the mystic river of Pantheism. 
And if one wishes to know the practical outcome of 
Pantheism, he need not leave the fountain head. As 
from Spinoza he can learn the essential features of 
the Pantheistic theory of the universe, so from him 
also he can learn the weak points of the theory. For 
in him is no disguise, no prudential reservation, no 
accommodation to existing fashions of thought, on 
such topics as human freedom, the reality of moral 
evil, and the life to come ; but a blunt denial of all 
our most cherished beliefs on these and kindred topics. 
But what I wished to say was, that no better evidence 
of the truth of Mr. Arnold's remark concerning 
Spinoza need be sought than that furnished in his 
own writings. In " Literature and Dogma," in par- 
ticular, Spinoza does come to the front dressed up in 
attractive modern guise, as a smart modern man of 
letters and child of nineteenth-century culture, but 
still plainly recognisable by his unmistakable Jewish 
physiognomy. " Literature and Dogma " is to a large 
extent just the Tractatns popularized and reproduced 
with much expository skill and easy grace of style. 
Arnold, like Spinoza, conceives of the Bible as a book, 
not of Dogma, but of Conduct. Its function is, not to 
teach us doctrines about God or other transcendental 
topics, but to set forth, the supreme value of right 
conduct ; and its claim to the lasting reverence and 
gratitude of mankind rests on the fact that it has 
performed this high task incomparably well. So far 
from being a book of dogmatic divinity, the Bible 
does not so much as declare in a dogmatic theological 
sense that God exists, or that He is personal, or that 
He is a Being to whom you can with propriety apply 



MI SCON CEP TIONS. 



47 



the masculine pronoun. But there is one thing the 
Bible does, over and above emphasizing the supreme 
importance of conduct. It recognises and proclaims 
with due emphasis the great truth that there is a 
power in the world not ourselves making for righteous- 
ness, tending to bring about a correspondence between 
character and lot, and so to make the good happy 
and the wicked miserable. This is not a dogma, but 
a fact which is capable of being verified by observation 
and by the study of history, and which may be admit- 
ted by all men, irrespective of their speculative opin- 
ions, by Atheists and Pantheists and Materialists, not 
less than by Theists. In this affirmation Mr. Arnold 
is certainly right, for the fact in question has been 
acknowledged by men of all schools, and by some it 
has been asserted with even greater emphasis than 
by himself; by none in modern times with more 
power than by Thomas Carlyle. The author of 
"Literature and Dogma" has the merit of coining a 
new phrase to describe the old fact; but his phrase 
means just what other men have spoken of by other 
names. Even Strauss, Atheist and Materialist though 
he was in his later days, acknowledged the fact denoted 
by Mr. Arnold's Power not ourselves, under the name 
of the moral order of the world, in some respects a 
preferable expression. But the author of " Literature 
and Dogma" makes no claim to have discovered the 
fact. The service which he claims to have rendered 
in his work, is to have duly directed the attention of 
his contemporaries to the relation of the Bible writers 
to the fact, which he thinks has been greatly lost 
sight of in consequence of the misuse of the Bible by 
professional interpreters, who have looked into the 



48 MISCONCEPTIONS. 

sacred writings only for their pet dogmas. The Bible 
writers, he tells us, though they lived many centuries 
ago, had eyes to discern this great fact. They have 
also been able in their writings to give it adequate 
powerful expression. Properly speaking, these writ- 
ings have no other aim than to assert the fact in every 
possible form, as a motive to right conduct. They 
do not all assert it in the same way. The Old Testa- 
ment writers sought the proofs that the Power not 
ourselves is at work too much in outward lot; and 
inasmuch as that power in its working only tends to 
unite righteousness and felicity, and does not by any 
means fully reach the goal, their minds became per- 
plexed, and they set about supplementing their grand 
fundamental doctrine by inventing fairy tales about a 
Messiah and a Messianic kingdom, and a life hereafter. 
Jesus came and taught men a new method of getting 
the reward of righteousness, which made them inde- 
pendent of outward events ; the method, viz., of seek- 
ing felicity within, in the state of the spirit; and a 
new secret for bringing blessedness into the heart, 
viz., self-denial. His was the perfect doctrine. But 
even the ancient Hebrew prophets, with all their 
errors and superstitions, rendered an inestimable ser- 
vice to mankind by their proclamation of the truth 
that conduct is the supremely important thing and 
that the Power not ourselves, — what they called the 
Eternal God, — is on the side of righteousness. This 
doctrine was worthy to be called a revelation, if any 
utterances of the human mind may receive that name ; 
and the Bible is the best of all books because, more 
than all other books, it directs men's attention to that 
which is at least three-fourths of human life, and more 



MISCONCEPTIONS. 49 

to be regarded by far than culture, or art, or any other 
human interest. After we have removed from the 
ancient book all that is erroneous or worthless, — 
miraculous narratives, fairy tales of a future golden 
age, incredible dogmas, — there remains a large mass 
of inestimably precious material devoted to the praise 
of righteousness and the inculcation of pure moral- 
ity, with an enthusiasm which raises ethics to the 
dignity of religion. 

I have no desire to undervalue the service rendered 
by Mr. Arnold to the Bible by the view of it which 
he has presented in so attractive a garb. Still less do 
I desire to undervalue the Bible viewed simply as a 
book, such as he makes it — a book which is pervaded 
by a noble passion for righteousness and by an in- 
tense belief in the reality of a moral order of the 
world. Whatever more may be said of the Bible, it is 
certainly true that it possesses these characteristics in 
a degree altogether unique. The Bible stands alone 
among books for the emphatic and persistent way in 
which it exalts morality, righteousness, to the sov- 
ereign place among human interests, and for the 
glowing eloquence with which in all its parts it de- 
clares the truth that verily there is a reward for the 
righteous, and a God that judgeth upon the earth; 
and on this account it must ever continue to com- 
mand the reverent respect of all morally earnest men, 
whatever their theological position. But the question 
stands over, whether Mr. Arnold, in directing atten- 
tion to these characteristics, has given a full account 
of the Bible, or has even pointed out its chief peculi- 
arity. In connection with that, another question has 
to be asked, viz., whether miracles can, as Mr. Arnold 



5o 



MISCONCEP TIONS. 



alleges, be removed from the Bible without material 
injury to its utility, or without affecting our concep- 
tion of its chief end. "There is nothing," says this 
author, " one would more desire for a person or doc- 
ument one greatly values, than to make them inde- 
pendent of miracles. And with regard to the Old 
Testament we have done this, for we have shown that 
the essential matter in the Old Testament is the reve- 
lation to Israel of the immeasurable grandeur, the 
eternal necessity, the priceless blessing of that with 
which not less than three-fourths of human life is in- 
deed concerned, righteousness. And it makes no 
difference to the preciousness of this revelation 
whether we believe that the Red Sea miraculously 
opened a passage to the Israelites, and the walls of 
Jericho miraculously fell down at the blast of Joshua's 
trumpet, or that these stories arose in the same way 
as other stories of the kind."* I am not careful to 
dispute this statement. But suppose the Bible as it 
stands contains another idea even more characteristic 
than the one Mr. Arnold signalizes, an idea to which 
miracle, — not, of course, this or that miracle, but a 
miraculous element, — is essential. In that case, to 
omit miracles, will simply signify changing the very 
fact-basis, on which our theory of revelation rests. 
The Bible may still contain much edifying matter, 
but it will be an entirely different book. It will con- 
vey different ideas from the actual Bible concerning 
God, man, and the world and their relations ; that is 
to say, it will teach by implication a different theory 
of the universe. The mutilated Bible will suggest a 



* "Literature and Dogma," pp. 123, 124. 



MISCONCEP TIONS. 5 ! 

different view of the raison d'etre of its own exist- 
ence, so different that it will be as it were the play of 
Hamlet without the part of Hamlet. That there is 
such an idea in the Bible I believe, and in the next 
chapter I will endeavour to explain what it is. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REVELATION. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REVELATION. 

In proceeding now to explain my view as to the 
chief design of revelation, it may be well to preface 
the discussion with a few remarks on the sense to be 
attached to the term Revelation. In last chapter I 
hinted parenthetically that Revelation and the Bible 
are not to be identified, as if the two terms were in 
all respects synonymous, and I may now briefly state 
the grounds of that opinion. There are then certain 
advantages to be gained from keeping in view the 
distinction between Revelation and Scripture, while, 
of course, ever recognising their intimate relations to 
each other. In the first place, the formal and de- 
liberate recognition of the distinction may help us to 
wean ourselves from the one-sided doctrinaire con- 
ception of revelation which has so extensively pre- 
vailed in past times. Then, further, if once we get it 
into our mind, that Revelation is one thing, Scripture 
another, though closely related, thing, being in truth 
its record, interpretation, and reflection, it will help 
to make us independent of questions concerning the 
dates of books. When the various parts of the 
Bible were written, is an obscure and difficult ques- 



56 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

tion on which much learned debate has taken place, 
and is still going on ; and we must be content to let 
the debate run its course, for it will not be stopped 
either by our wishes or by ecclesiastical authority. 
And one thing which will help us to be patient, is a 
clear perception that the order in which revelation 
was given is to be distinguished from the order in 
which the books which contain the record thereof 
were written. It is conceivable that revelations might 
be given in the inverse order to that in which they 
were recorded. Thus, e.g., a certain school of critics 
tells us that the more important prophetic writings 
are of earlier date than the legal portions of the 
Pentateuch ; that in fact, so far as the literary record 
of revelation goes, the Prophets were before the Law, 
not after it, as the familiar phrase, " the Law and the 
Prophets," implies. But the law may have preceded 
prophecy in revelation though not in writing; in 
which case not only will the phrase " Law and 
Prophets " still have its truth, but, what is of much 
more importance, the natural order of sequence will 
be observed in the Bible history of the course of rev- 
elation. 

But a still more important advantage than either 
of the foregoing is to be reaped from keeping in view 
the distinction in question. It is this, that the dis- 
tinction makes room for the idea that possibly the 
revelation which God has made to men consisted, not 
in words exclusively, or even chiefly, but in deeds as 
well, yea in deeds above all, forming, when connected 
together, a very remarkable history. What if the 
most appropriate formula for the act of revelation 
were, not, " Thus saith the Lord," but " Thus did the 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA T/OJV. 57 

Lord " ? In that case we could imagine a very im- 
portant revelation taking place, and entering as a 
divine element into human history, without such a 
book as the Bible coming into existence at all. A 
book is not necessary to the being of a revelation. It 
may be necessary to its well-being, that it is, to insure 
that the revelation shall accomplish the ends for which 
it was given ; though here we do well to bear in 
mind the caution of Bishop Butler, that we are no 
judges whether a revelation not committed to writing 
would or would not have answered its purpose. As 
an antidote to the tendency of believing minds to 
pronounce dogmatically on such questions, he re- 
marks very pertinently: " I ask, What purpose? It 
would not have answered all the purposes which it 
has now answered, and in the same degree ; but it 
would have answered others, or the same in different 
degrees. And which of these were the purposes of 
God, and best fell in with His general government, 
we could not at all have determined beforehand."* 
But without pressing such considerations, it may be 
admitted that a record of revelation of some sort, 
oral or written, was indispensable ; though there is 
truth in the remark of Rothe, that " Divine revelation 
works on incessantly as co-efficient in all human 
knowledge, independently of its being known and re- 
cognised as revelation. "f It may further be admit- 
ted that an oral record, by means of one generation 
showing God's works to another, is so liable to cor- 
ruption, that a written record may be pronounced, in 
the language of the Westminster Confession, " most 



* "Analogy," Part II., chap. iii. f" Zur.Dogmatik," p. 78, 



58 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

necessary" ; * that is to say, of such a high degree of 
utility as amounts to a practical necessity. My 
present object is not, of course, to disparage the value 
of Holy Scripture, but to assert the possibility of a 
revelation without a Bible, and that in the interest of 
a conception of revelation to which the Bible itself 
does ample justice, and which alone enables us to do 
full justice to the Bible. Put the book foremost in 
your idea of revelation, and you almost inevitably 
think of revelation as consisting in words, doctrines. 
Put it in the background for a moment, forget at this 
stage that there is a book, and you make room in 
your mind for the idea that revelation may proceed 
by acts as well as words, even more characteristically 
than by words. It is very necessary that we should 
have this idea in our minds in advancing to the con- 
sideration of the question, What is the chief end of 
revelation ? for it will appear that that end was such 
as to demand Divine self-manifestation by action, not 
to the exclusion of words, but by action very specially 
— by acts of the miraculous order largely, such as 
those which Mr. Arnold thinks he can eliminate from 
the Bible without detriment to its practical value. 

Revelation, then, does not mean causing a sacred 
book to be written for the religious instruction of 
mankind. What then does it mean? It signifies 
God manifesting Himself in the history of the world 
in a supernatural manner and for a special purpose. 
Manifesting Himself ; for the proper subject of reve- 
lation is God. The Revealer is also the Revealed. 
This is recognised in the words of the Westminster 
Confession : " It pleased the Lord to reveal Himself, 



Chapter i. i. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 59 

and to declare that His will unto His church."* Mani- 
festing Himself in history, I add, to distinguish the 
revelation now under discussion from that which God 
has made of Himself in Nature. The words, " in a 
supernatural manner and for a special purpose," are 
included in the definition to distinguish the subject 
under consideration from that revelation of God as a 
moral Governor which is discernible in the ordinary 
course of Providence. I believe that we have the 
record of such a special revelation in the Bible, and 
the question I have undertaken to discuss is, What is 
its nature and design ? In other words : If revelation in 
general signify Divine self-manifestation, under what 
aspect did God manifest Himself in that revelation 
whereof we have a record in the Holy Scriptures ? 

To that question my reply is : The revelation 
recorded in the Scriptures is before all things a self- 
manifestation of God, as the God of grace. In that 
revelation God appears as one who cherishes a 
gracious purpose towards the human race. The rev- 
elation consists, not in the mere intimation of the 
purpose, but more especially in the slow but steadfast 
execution of it by a connected series of transactions 
which all point in one direction, and at length reach 
their goal in the realization of the end contemplated 
from the first. As has been well said : " If we have 
any revelation from God at all, we have it at the heart 
of a great historical development; and if we are to 
find the evidence of it anywhere, we must seek for it 
as the cause and vital force of historical movements 
and events which otherwise would never have arisen, 
or, at least, would not have assumed their special 

* Chapter i. 1. 



60 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REVEIA TION. 

shape and significance."* The animating soul of this 
historical movement was a purpose of grace, in which, 
as eventually became apparent, all mankind was con- 
cerned, though the fact was hid during the ages of 
preparation. But as the word "grace" is in certain 
departments of theology associated with very mys- 
terious ideas, I must be careful to clear it as much as 
possible of associations fitted to create a prejudice at 
this stage. It is used here in a very simple, intel- 
ligible sense, which can be easily defined by a form 
of expression antithetical to that employed by Mr. 
Arnold to define his idea of God. Mr. Arnold de- 
scribes God as " a Power not ourselves, making for 
righteousness." When we speak of God as the God 
of grace, we mean to represent Him as a Power not 
ourselves, making for mercy ; a Power that dealeth 
not with men after their sins, but overcometh evil 
with good ; a Power acting as a redeeming, healing 
influence on the moral and spiritual disease of the 
world. This is assuredly a God-worthy representa- 
tion. Grace, so defined, is indeed the highest cate- 
gory under which we can think of God. It rises as 
much above righteousness as righteousness rises 
above the category under which natural religion con- 
ceives God, that, viz., of Might directed by intelligence. 
A God of righteousness is certainly a great advance 
on a God of mere power ; yet it is only a step upwards 
towards a higher idea of God, in which the Divine 



* Smyth, "Old Faith in New Lights," p. 37. This is an admi- 
rable, and on the whole very successful attempt to adjust the apolo- 
getic argument to the modern idea of Evolution, as applied in 
science and in criticism. (Scribner & Co., New York). 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 6 1 

Being becomes Self-communicating Redeeming Love.* 
God cannot be said to have been fully revealed till He 
has been revealed in this aspect. And as God has mani- 
fested Himself in nature as Power controlled by in- 
telligence, and in the moral order of the world as a 
Righteous Ruler, so we should expect to find Him 
revealing Himself as a loving Father or gracious 
Redeemer. It cannot be denied that such a revela- 
tion is very much needed. The moral condition of 
the human race makes it very desirable. I speak of 
that condition simply as it reveals itself to observa- 
tion, without assuming that we know anything of its 
cause. The doctrine of a Fall may or may not be 
true ; at present, I do not care or need to know. 
However sin came into the world, the fact is, it is 
here, bringing manifold misery in its train. And on 
any theory as to the origin of sin, it is very desirable 
that it should, if possible, be cast out, and the mani- 
fold evils it has caused be cured. It were eminently 
worthy of God to undertake the task ; and that He 
should undertake it is not only conceivable, but 
probable. What more worthy of God, and therefore 
what more likely, than that He, looking down on a 
race enveloped in moral darkness and corruption, 
should be moved with compassion, and resolve to do 
all that is possible to dispel the darkness by communi- 
cating the knowledge of Himself, and to remove the 
corruption by measures fitted to elevate and purify ? 
And if man's state creates a need for a revelation of 
grace, it cannot be said that Nature or ordinary 
Providence supplies all the revelation that is required. 



* Vid. Schweitzer, " Glaubenslehre," vol. i., p. 311. 
4 



62 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

It is true, indeed, as Bishop Butler has pointed out, 
— for few things have escaped him,— that there is a 
kind of rudimentary Gospel even in nature, hints that 
the God who made the world is one in whom a com- 
passionate spirit dwells, and dim foreshadowings of a 
higher kingdom in which grace exercises free sway.* 
Health injured by folly can, within certain limits, be 
recovered ; diseases have their remedies, some known, 
more perhaps as yet unknown ; broken bones knit 
again. Many such things there are to remind us that 
the constitution of nature is on the side of mercy, 
and that when men talk of the inexorable way in 
which natural law works on, inflicting penalties for 
transgression irrespective of all changes of mind on 
the part of the transgressor, they are only looking at 
one side of a matter which has two sides. In like 
manner it may be said of the moral order of the world, 
that it is not merely a Power making for righteous- 
ness and against unrighteousness, — that is to say, 
playing the part of a retributive justice, — but more- 
over, a Power that dealeth not with men after their 
sins, but is merciful and gracious, and slow to anger, 
and repenteth of the evil threatened. Some of the 
Scripture declarations to this effect concerning God, 
are simply readings off from the phenomena presented 
by ordinary Providence. Still, while all this is to be 
thankfully acknowledged, it remains true that the 
Gospel in Nature and in ordinary Providence is very 
dim and rudimentary. It is but the starlight of 
Divine Love, and casts only a faint ray of hope on 
the moral destiny of man. The revelation of grace in 



* "Analogy," Part II. chap. v. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 63 

these lower spheres comes far short of gracious possi- 
bilities. We can conceive manifestations of grace far 
in excess of those vouchsafed in the order of nature 
or in the history of nations. These lower manifesta- 
tions, far from contenting us, only make us long for 
something more unmistakable in intention and more 
effective in influence, and inspire in our souls the hope 
that, the dim starlight of grace having been given, the 
sunlight will not be withheld. 

To no one who accepts the theistic view of the 
universe ought the fulfilment of this hope to seem in- 
credible. We know, of course, that such an expecta- 
tion must appear a dream to the thorough-going ad- 
vocates of philosophic naturalism. Such a Divine 
self-manifestation as is the object of the hope, is im- 
possible except on a conception of God which natural- 
ism disallows. Moreover, the end for which the 
manifestation takes place, — the redemption of man, 
the cure of moral evil, — appears from the same view- 
point unattainable. It was one of the chief objec- 
tions of Celsus to the Incarnation, that it had in view 
an unattainable purpose. Moral evil, he said, springs 
from a necessity of nature, having its origin in matter, 
and its amount is constant and invariable. Even if 
temporary amelioration were practicable, it is hardly 
worth the trouble, for all things are subject to the 
law of periodicity. That which has been shall be. 
The present state of things will reproduce itself in 
some future aeon — any present state of things you 
choose to think of. As Origen remarked, this doc- 
trine, if true, is manifestly subversive of Christianity, 
for it is idle to speak of a redemptive economy acting 
on free agents by moral influences, where a reign of 



64 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

necessity obtains ; and if all things must eventually 
return to the state they were once in, then man's un- 
redeemed state must have its turn, and Christ shall 
have died in vain. Modern naturalistic philosophy, 
whether pessimistic or optimistic in tendency, equally 
excludes the idea of redemption in any real sense of 
the word. The pessimist denies, not only that the 
world can be made better by any outside influence, 
but even that it has any inherent tendency to grow 
better. Things in general, and men in particular, are 
going on from bad to worse ; and the only deliver- 
ance possible from the moral and physical evil so 
widely prevalent, is that the universe should cease to 
exist. Optimistic naturalism takes a more cheerful 
view of the situation. There is a steady progress on- 
wards in the universe of being, both in the physical 
and in the moral sphere. The world, says Strauss, is 
not planned by a highest reason, but it has the high- 
est reason for its goal. In like manner it may be, and 
by Strauss and others is, admitted that the tendency 
in the moral sphere is towards an ever increasing re- 
alization of the ideal moral order. But this hope for 
the future, as cherished by atheistic evolutionists, is 
not based on any belief in a Divine influence, or even 
in the free exercise of his moral faculties by man. To 
such thinkers, man is not a free being ; and his moral 
improvement, if it deserves the name, is the result of 
the upward tendency of all surrounding cosmic influ- 
ences. 

No one who believes that there is a God, and that 
man is a moral personality, will rest satisfied with this 
theory of redemption by a purely physical evolution. 
However naturalistic in tendency, however much in- 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REVELATION. 65 

fluenced by the sceptical spirit of the age, he will strive 
to hold fast, though it were in the baldest form, the 
idea of a redemption — a moral amelioration, springing 
out of influences that can be traced up to God as their 
source, and that act on man's reason and will and bet- 
ter inclinations. Repudiating all belief in supernatu- 
ral grace, in the sense of the creeds, as a source of 
moral regeneration, and in an objective Atonement, 
he will yet base his hope for the transformation of 
human character, not only on the elements of good 
to be found even in the most depraved, and on the 
beneficent constitution of the universe acting on these 
from without, and provoking them into conflict with 
the evil within, and otherwise influencing men for 
good even when they are unconscious of it, but on 
" the action of the Divine idea, as the Gospel presents 
it, upon the reason of man — the idea given in that 
revelation of the Divine good-will, or paternal relation 
towards us, by which Christ has reinforced our better 
nature, enabling us to be intelligent fellow-workers 
with God in our conflict with evil, and giving a higher 
aim to our life."* From the orthodox point of view 
this is certainly a very unsatisfactory account of the 
renovating power of Christianity ; indeed, a more 
meagre and colourless theory of Redemption it is 
hardly possible to conceive. It contains, however, 
one thing in advance of optimistic evolutionism, viz., 
the recognition of the inspiring influence of the Chris- 
tian idea of God, as a God of love, or, in relation to 
sin, a God of grace. This idea the advocates of the 
theory call a revelation, in the sense that Christ, by 



* Vide " Scotch Sermons." Sermon X., on The Renovating Power 
of Christianity. By the Rev. William Mackintosh, D.D. 



66 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

His superior insight, for the first time discovered the 
import of the fact that the tendency of the influences 
by which we are surrounded in this world is on the 
whole in favour of good, rather than of evil. This 
tendency they regard as a feature impressed by God 
on the creation, and as an evidence of His design to 
secure the triumph of what is good, and to deliver men 
from the power of evil. And it is regarded as Christ's 
great merit, to have proclaimed to the world the sig- 
nificance of this divinely originated beneficent consti- 
tution of things. " After being hidden from human 
vision for long ages, or only partially surmised by 
other teachers, this design was at length brought fully 
to light, and presented to our faith by the Founder 
of Christianity."* The merit of this theory, in the 
eyes of modern culture, will be, that it reduces the 
fact-basis of its doctrine of redemption to something 
which can be acknowledged by men of all creeds, the- 
istic or atheistic, provided they are not pessimists. 
What it builds on that fact-basis is the inspiring eleva- 
ting power that lies in conceiving of the Author of the 
beneficent constitution of the universe as a Father. 
And without doubt there is much in a name; yet it 
is questionable whether it be worth while formulating 
a distinctive doctrine of renovation, when it differs in 
nothing but a name from the creed of Agnosticism. 
Strauss believed in the beneficent tendencies of the 
Universum. What great difference does it make 
whether I call the stream of tendency Universum or 
Father? The one name is warmer than the other, 
that is all. Every one whose mind is not completely 



* " Scotch Sermons." Sermon X. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. &j 

dominated by the naturalistic spirit of the age, will 
turn from so bald a doctrine in quest of a theory that 
shall fill the word grace with more meaning, and bring 
to bear on man a more powerful force tending towards 
the improvement of his moral condition. 

We rise at least one degree in our idea of a revela- 
tion of grace, when we see in Christ, not merely one 
who read off accurately the beneficent tendency of 
the universe, for the enlightenment of mankind, but 
one who in His own person presented to view at once 
the ideal of humanity perfectly realised, and the ful- 
ness of Divine grace. If Christ be the sinless man, 
and if, — in His wondrous sympathy with the sinful, 
which made Him love them in spite of their moral 
loathesomeness, and hope for their repentance when 
others despaired, — He be the revealer, or exegete of 
the very inmost Spirit of God, then He is in a most 
real sense a supernatural self-manifestation of God as 
the God of grace. A sinless man is a moral miracle ; 
and the gift of him to the world is an act of creative 
power in which grace is revealed, because the aim of 
the gift is to show to men their own ideal, that by it, 
hovering above them in peerless excellence, they may 
be drawn upwards to the heights of virtue. A man 
full of love to the sinful, though personally sinless, is 
still more emphatically a revelation of grace, because 
in him God makes known to men for their comfort 
the depths of pity for the guilty hidden in the Divine 
bosom. Such a man, sinless yet sympathetic, awakens 
in me many emotions fitted to act as motives to vir- 
tue. As an ideal, he excites admiration and aspira- 
tion, and likewise shame, sorrow, humiliation, in view 
of my moral shortcoming, revealed to my view in 



68 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

darkest colours by the contrast between his character 
and my own. As a sympathetic friend and brother, 
he quickens in the breast of a penitent hope, at the 
moment when he is prone to give way to despair. 
What more likely than that such a man should be 
sent into the world in the course of the ages, to be at 
once the crown of the first creation, and the starting 
point of a new career of infinite hope for mankind, 
the head of a new humanity? And what more wor- 
thy of God than to undertake in good time the work 
of preparing the world for the advent of such a divine- 
ly endowed Man, so that he might come when and 
where the human race was in the fittest condition to 
receive and retain his beneficent influence ; determin- 
ing, e.g., the people out of which he should spring, 
and so guiding their history that he should receive 
from them the maximum of endowment capable of 
being transmitted by the law of heredity, and should 
find in them the best possible leverage for acting on 
the world ? Would not such an historical preparation 
for the advent of the Divine Man be a veritable revela- 
tion of grace, natural in its gradual progress, yet su- 
pernatural in its immanent aim ? And would not the 
Man, when he came, be a fitting consummation to 
such a divinely guided process? 

In these sentences I have sketched a theory of a su- 
pernatural revelation of grace, based on such a concep- 
tion of the person of Christ as that contained in the 
Christology of Schleiermacher. It is a theory which 
reduces the amount of the miraculous element in reve- 
lation to a minimum, for it regards Christ only as a 
sinless Man in whom the Spirit of God dwelt in the 
fullest possible measure. It is also a theory which 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REVELATION. 69 

introduces the least possible amount of mystery into 
the nature of the influence exercised by Christ as Re- 
deemer. He works on the world as a redeeming pow- 
er by example and by sympathy, by ethical as distinct 
from what Schleiermacher characterized as magical 
influence. But in proportion as this theory gains in 
rationality, so to speak, it loses in motive power. For 
by its conception of Christ as the Ideal Man, it ex- 
cludes from the number of redeeming influences the 
power of God in self-sacrifice, which can enter only 
with faith in the Incarnation. When Christ is re- 
garded as a Divine Being entering into humanity with 
a redeeming purpose in His heart, we then see in God 
a Being subjected to sorrow by human sins, and com- 
pelled by the instincts and yearnings of His love to 
become a burden-bearer to His own creatures. And 
through such a view of God alone do we begin to 
comprehend what a revelation of grace means. For 
now we see grace revealing itself, not merely by word, 
through a doctrine concerning God taught by a proph- 
et, or by Christ, to the effect that He is a Father, and 
that the essence of His being is love — not by word 
alone, but by act. And that is germane to the nature 
of grace. It is of the nature of true love to reveal it- 
self by deeds as well as words. It is only feigned 
love that speaks kind words without corresponding 
actions. Grace revealed in doctrine is of value only 
as the promise of a higher revelation, in which all gra- 
cious possibilities shall be realised ; and only in God 
subjecting Himself to sacrifice are these possibilities 
realised. Till I see that spectacle, I can always im- 
agine something higher; but when I see it, I perceive 
that the limit of gracious possibility is touched. In 
4* 



yo THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

the Cross the revelation of grace reaches its culmina- 
tion. And just because it does so, I feel that the In- 
carnation which makes this result possible is credible, 
notwithstanding the mystery and the miracle involved 
in the event. It is inconsistent for any one who be- 
lieves grace or love to be a real attribute of God, to 
stumble at the supernatural in revelation ; for the ex- 
clusion simply makes it impossible for the Divine 
Being to manifest Himself as the God of grace to the 
full extent of what is involved in the idea of grace. 
Yet with such inconsistency many in our day are 
chargeable who are emphatic in their proclamation of 
the Fatherhood of God, yet accept the philosophic 
doctrine of Divine immanence which makes God a 
prisoner in nature, unable in any case or for any rea- 
son to break through the chain of natural causality. 

Thus Mr. Rathbone Greg, listening to the voice of 
his heart or his moral consciousness, — the sole source 
of revelation to the school he belongs to, that of 
modern speculative Theism, — feels constrained to 
think of God as a Personal Fatherly Being. " Strauss's 
Universum," he tells us, " Comte's Humanity, even 
Mr. Arnold's stream of tendency that makes for 
righteousness, excite in me no worship. I cannot 
pray to the ' Immensities ' and the ' Eternities ' of 
Carlyle. They proffer me no help, they vouchsafe no 
sympathy, they suggest no comfort. It may be that 
such a personal God is a mere anthropomorphic crea- 
tion. But at least in resting in it, I rest in something 
I almost seem to realize ; at least I share the view 
which Jesus indisputably held of the Father whom 
He obeyed, communed with and worshipped."* The 



Creed of Christendom." Introduction, p. xc., 3rd ed. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. j i 

words are full of interest, both for the pathetic indi- 
cation which they give of the craving of the human 
heart for a living God with whom it can have real 
communion, even when the intellect is clouded with 
doubt, and also for the incidental evidence they afford 
of the unreliableness of the moral consciousness as a 
source of revelation concerning Divine things. But 
at least, if the moral consciousness is to be the source 
of revelation, let it be used consistently. If at the 
bidding of the heart I am to believe in a God who is 
a Person, why not at its bidding also believe in a God 
who is not imprisoned in the world, but can hear 
prayer, exercise a Providence over all, do miracles, 
become man, demonstrate His grace by entering into 
the measures of humanity and passing through a cur- 
riculum of temptation and suffering? If God is to be 
personal, free, good, let Him be it out and out. I 
desire a God at liberty to do heroic things, to humble 
Himself. 

Miss Cobbe, another representative of the same 
school, — on the authority of the same oracle, the 
moral consciousness, — declares that God is good, and 
good in our sense of the word. Very well ; I accept 
the dictum cordially, and I point in proof of its truth 
to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who, being rich, 
for our sakes became poor. Modern Theism, with its 
doctrine of immanence, can point to nothing like that 
in proof that God is love in the human sense of the 
word. A God imprisoned in the world has no career 
for self-sacrifice, that is, He cannot be love as we un- 
derstand love ; for love among men shows itself most 
reliably and conspicuously by self-sacrifice for the 
good of others. 



j 2 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

If the Incarnation of God for the purpose of acting 
as a redemptive power in the moral world be, as we 
have just seen, intrinsically probable on the principles 
of Theism, there is little room for doubt as to the fit- 
ness of Divine self-sacrifice to be a mighty force mak- 
ing for the regeneration of mankind. Therein indeed 
lies a very power of God unto salvation in all who 
believe. This may be confidently affirmed, quite 
irrespective of all questions as to rival theories of 
atonement. The truth of the statement rests on no 
special theory as to the theological significance of 
Christ's death, but simply on the fact that the passion 
of the Saviour was the passion of Deity. Admit that 
fact, and put on it any theological construction you 
please, — find in it an objective atonement for sin, or 
only a magnificent demonstration of self-sacrificing 
love intended to act on the minds of men as an ethi- 
cal influence ; in either case it cannot but prove a 
truly Divine power making for redemption. The 
history of the Christian Church supplies sufficient 
evidence on that score, in the form of multitudes in 
every age turned from sin to righteousness, turned, 
not by particular theories of atonement, but by the 
great broad fact that the Son of God suffered on the 
cross for man's sin. The question as to the right 
theoretical construction to be put on that fact be- 
longs to Biblical theology, and is simply a question 
of interpretation. The apologist has no vital interest 
in the decision. The chief consideration biassing 
him in favour of the theological doctrine of an object- 
ive Atonement, is that, whereas, on the ethical, influ- 
ence theory, Christ's power to act on the world as 
Redeemer is limited to those who become acquainted 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 



73 



with His history, on this view Christ's atoning death 
becomes valid for all time as a sacrifice offered by the 
Eternal Spirit of holy love, and may exercise an im- 
portant influence on the destinies of the generations 
which lived before His advent, as well as on those 
which came after, and of those who have never heard 
His name, as well as on those to whom the Gospel 
has been preached. Those who deny an objective 
Atonement, simply cancel the Godward aspect of/ 
Christ's self-sacrifice ; the human aspect of unspeak- 
able sympathy and love, taking on itself the burden 
of the world's sin and misery, remains, with alb the 
ethical power to change the current of the moral 
affections and to inspire enthusiastic devotion to the 
Divine kingdom. 

But the question still remains, whether the Script- 
ures, which purport to be the records of revelation, 
bear out the view I have given as to the chief end for 
which a revelation was vouchsafed. Does the litera- 
ture of the Bible, on thoughtful perusal, convey the 
impression that its contents chiefly relate to a purpose 
of grace, and that its great watchword is redemption ? 
Now there can be no hesitation as to the answer to 
be given to this question, so far as the New Testa- 
ment is concerned. Christianity, the New Testament 
being witness, is emphatically and before all things 
the religion of redemption. Mr. Arnold sums up 
Christ's teaching in two sentences : " Seek thy hap- 
piness from within, not from without"; and, " that 
thou mayest be happy, thou must deny thyself." 
Christ did say these things; but He had a great deal 
more to say than they amount to. There are other 
sayings even more characteristic of His doctrine, and 



74 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 



more instructive as to the nature of His mission ; two 
in particular. These are : " The Son of Man is come 
to save that which was lost," and " The Kingdom of 
heaven is at hand." The former saying, often uttered 
by Jesus, implies that His mission had special refer- 
ence to the sinful ; and in accordance with this we 
find from the Gospel records that He spent much of 
His time among people belonging to the degraded 
classes of Jewish society. This part of His conduct, 
as all know, was much misunderstood, and gave fre- 
quent occasion for faultfinding, whereby He was put 
on His defence. The defences He offered were very 
striking, very beautiful, and very instructive as to the 
nature of the religion which He came to inaugurate. 
He said at one time, " They that be whole need not 
a Physician, but they that are sick," to signify that 
Christianity is a religion of redemption, and there- 
fore busies itself fitly with those who most urgently 
need remedy. At another time He said in effect, 
"To whom much is forgiven the same loveth much," 
to teach that Christianity not only occupies itself with 
the sinful, but has an interest in taking pains to make 
converts from among the greatest offenders, because 
among these it finds the greatest capacity of devotion. 
On a third occasion He said, " There is joy in heaven 
over one sinner repenting, more than over ninety and 
nine just persons who need no repentance," to inti- 
mate that in the view of Christianity the meanest of 
mankind was worth saving ; the repentance of even a 
poor publican (for such a case was in Christ's view 
when He spake the saying quoted) an event of solemn 
interest, and a most fitting occasion of gladness. 
From these golden words it is evident that Christ's 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 75 

mission, in His own view, was, before all, that of a 
spiritual Healer. And without going into details, for 
which there is no space, I may remark, that from all 
our Lord's recorded utterances, it appears that the 
Kingdom He proclaimed was a Kingdom of grace, 
open to all on condition of faith and repentance — a 
Kingdom whose advent was good news, and which 
was itself the summum bonum, because therein God 
in His Paternal Benignity admitted men freely for- 
given to unrestricted fellowship with Himself, and 
so united them in fraternal bonds to each other as 
members of a holy commonwealth. Christ's teach- 
ing on both heads, the nature of His own mission and 
the nature of the Kingdom, was thus full of grace, as 
He Hi|nself was full of grace, as the Friend of sinners 
and Redeemer of men. 

In the Pauline conception of Christianity it is not 
less conspicuously the religion of redemption. Paul 
indeed seems constantly to be occupied with the idea 
of righteousness ; but righteousness in his pages is 
really a synonym for grace. The righteousness of the 
Pauline epistles is usually, though not invariably, an 
objective righteousness, not in us, but hovering over 
us, a gift of Divine grace, the righteousness of God 
given to faith. This may seem a very artificial idea 
of righteousness, but that is a question of words ; the 
thing which Paul is ever thinking of is the grace of 
God that bringeth salvation. The Master and the 
Apostle in their respective types of doctrine coincide 
in the main. They certainly contemplate the same 
thing, the summum bonum, from different points of 
view ; but it is the same thing both have in their 
eye ; and even the respective view-points, as we shall 



y6 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

see hereafter, are more closely related than they 



seem.* 



As Paul read the Old Testament, it also had to do 
above all things with redemption or the purpose of 
grace. The chief thing he found there, the kernel or 
hidden treasure of the Hebrew Scriptures, was the 
revelation of the Promise. To the ordinary Jew the 
Law appeared the principal matter, the promise re- 
tiring into the background, recognised doubtless as 
the end to be reached by the keeping of the law as 
the means, but completely overshadowed by the im- 
portance attached to the means. But Paul inverted 
the order of importance, and vindicated for the prom- 
ise the place of supremacy. Before the law in time, 
it was therefore also entitled to come after it, super- 
seding it when it had served its temporary purpose, 
which was simply to prepare the race of Abraham and 
the world generally, in its minority, for the enjoyment 
of the promise when the heir entered on his majority, 
and became at length a genuine Son of God. 

Was Paul's reading of the Old Testament correct, 
or did he read into it a system of ideas not really 
there, revealed to his mind, not by legitimate exegesis, 
but by a peculiar religious experience ? Prima facie 
the latter may appear to be the true state of the case, 
Pfleiderer accordingly affirms that the Apostle's view 
of the relation between the law and the promise " was 
quite remote from the historical intention of the law- 
giving, and wholly without ground in the letter of the 
law." " It is," he says, " for the consciousness which 



* Some further observations on Christ's doctrine and Paul's con- 
cerning the gift of grace, as compared with each other, will be 
found in chapter vi. of this work. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. jj 

takes its stand on the historical soil of the Old Testa- 
ment, simply a matter of course, that the law would 
not be given in order to increase sin through its non- 
fulfilment, but in order to be fulfilled, and so to lead 
to righteousness. Nor could it appear to such a con- 
sciousness that this aim of the law stood in any op- 
position to the promise to Abraham ; on the contrary, 
it would appear to him a matter of course that God 
gave to Abraham the blessing on the understanding 
that the seed of Abraham was to render obedience to 
the Divine will, in other words to the law afterwards 
to be given."* Now probably such were the thoughts 
of men at the beginning; but this does not settle the 
question of the Divine intention in the lawgiving. We 
must distinguish between the Divine end of the law, 
and the end which was present to the minds of the 
instruments of revelation, e.g. Moses. From the point 
of view of Divine teleology the Apostle's doctrine of 
the law is unassailable. The ultimate result reveals 
the initial Divine intention, so that we may say that 
what God had in view from the first was the promise, 
and that the law entered to prepare men for the re- 
ception of the promised blessing by a varied discipline, 
to be a pedagogue, a gaoler, a tutor, and a rough hus- 
band, to make Christ and the era of grace, liberty, and 
love welcome. The law was a lower stage in the de- 
velopment of humanity, preparing for a higher, in 
presence of which it loses its rights, though the good 
that was in it is taken up into the higher, and united 
to the initial stage of the promise to which it stood 
in opposition. But as for the thoughts of the Jewish 



* " Paulinismus," p. 87. 



78 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

legislator and his contemporaries and successors be- 
longing to the early generations of Israel's history, 
they may have been considerably different from those 
of Paul, who contemplated the matter in view of the 
result. They looked with hope on an institution 
which was destined to end in failure and despair. The 
commandment which Paul found to be unto death, 
they regarded as ordained unto life. They did not 
see to the end of that which was to be abolished; 
there was a veil upon their faces in reference to the 
purpose of the law. It was only as time went on that 
the veil began to be taken away by sorrowful experi- 
ences, and spirit-taught souls began to see that the 
commandment was ordained, not so much for life and 
blessedness, as for the knowledge of sin and misery ; 
and that if any good was to come to Israel, it must 
be by the supersession of the Sinaitic covenant through 
a new covenant of grace, under which the law should 
be written, not on tables of stone, but on the heart, 
and all iniquity should be freely forgiven. 

Keeping in view the slow and gradual manner in 
which even inspired men attained to a comprehension 
of the Divine purpose in the lawgiving, we should 
not be surprised were there found not a little in the 
Old Testament to bear out the impression that right- 
eousness in a legal sense is its burthen. We should 
not even be surprised to find not a few traces of the 
influence of a legal spirit in the literature of the Old 
Covenant ; for what would these prove but this, that 
the child's thoughts during the period of tutors and 
governors were tinged by the discipline under which 
he lived ? That such traces are to be found we shall 
see hereafter. But when due allowance has been 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 



79 



made for these, it still remains true that the keynote 
of the Old Testament is grace, and that the deepest 
current of thought runs in the direction of a religion 
of Trust in God as the Redeemer. If one wanted a 
single text which should most faithfully indicate the 
general drift of the Hebrew Scriptures, he might not 
inaptly find it in the beautiful words of the later 
Isaiah : " Doubtless Thou art our Father, though 
Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge 
us not : Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer 
from everlasting is Thy name." So far is legal right- 
eousness from being the deepest thought of the Old 
Testament writers, that the word righteousness itself 
is often used by them, as by Paul, as a synonym for 
grace, or for God's faithfulness in keeping His prom- 
ise ; as in the words of the hundred and third Psalm : 
" The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to ever- 
lasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteous- 
ness unto children's children." Nor is this a solitary 
text; similar utterances abound in the sacred books, 
insomuch that some go the length of affirming that 
the word righteousness is scarcely ever used in the 
sense of retributive justice, but almost always is prac- 
tically synonymous with grace. 

The idea of grace is very conspicuous in the pro- 
phetic literature. The God of the great prophets 
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the author of the later portions 
of the book of Isaiah's prophecies, as also very specially 
of Hosea, is characteristically a God who assumes a 
gracious attitude towards His people, as the forgiver 
of Israel's iniquities, the healer of her spiritual dis- 
eases, the founder of a new covenant which shall be 
free from the faults adhering to the old one. And 



80 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

along with this evangelic idea of God goes a certain 
universalism, a recognition of the truth that Israel 
has not a monopoly of God's grace, that its benefits 
are open to all. The God who is the Redeemer of 
Israel, addresses the whole world in these terms: 
" Look unto Me and be ye saved, all the ends of the 
earth, for I am God, and there is none else." Israel 
is regarded as elected to be a missionary people to 
spread the knowledge of the true God among the 
nations, and so to make her God the ground of her 
claim to the gratitude and respect of mankind.' This 
is only what we should expect ; for a religion of 
grace recognizes no claim in any man or people to 
Divine favour as matter of right, and therefore con- 
sistently puts all men and nations on the same level. 
Such a religion may not deny absolutely the preroga- 
tives of a particular people like Israel as an elect race ; 
but it will make these prerogatives consist in being 
the vehicle through which God conveys His grace to 
all others, and so regard election as merely a method 
by which God uses the few to bless the many. 

' These remarks remind us that in the Scripture ac- 
count of Abraham's history God is represented as ad- 
dressing to the Patriarch a call in which the prophetic 
conception of God and of Israel's destiny is already 
anticipated. That call contained the promise : " I 
will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless 
thee, and make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a 
blessing: and in thee shall all families of the earth be 
blessed." The words throughout are full of grace. 
God's attitude is that of one who sovereignly and 
freely blesses ; whether the blessing be temporal or 
spiritual does not matter, the spirit is the same in 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 8 1 

either case. They are also pervaded by the spirit of 
universalism. The God who is to bless Abraham and 
his descendants means also to bless all nations ; means 
to bless them by blessing Abraham and his offspring. 
This holds true whether we retain the version of the 
last clause of the above text, given in the English 
Bible, or accept that proposed by critics : " In thee 
shall all families of the earth bless themselves." The 
nations could bless themselves in Israel only because 
they knew and appreciated her state ; and those who 
could do this would be themselves partakers of the 
blessing. 

If such a promise was really made to Abraham, if 
he left his native abode with such a hope in his 
breast, then it may be truly said that the revelation 
recorded in the Bible from its very commencement 
was a revelation of grace. In a sense it may be said 
that the Bible begins with the call of Abraham, all 
that goes before, the first eleven chapters of Genesis, 
being a preface intended to convey a general idea of 
the state of the world when the progenitor of Israel 
came upon the scene. Yet here, at the very starting 
point of the history in the long course of which the 
gracious purpose of the self-revealing God was to be 
slowly evolved, we find the nature of the purpose 
made known with a degree of clearness approaching 
that with which it shines in the pages of the prophets. 
But naturalistic critics tell us that there is a very sim- 
ple explanation of this. The prophetic ideas of God 
and of Israel's destiny are in the history of Abraham, 
because the prophets put them there." "From the 
hands of prophetic revisers," says Pfleiderer, " flow 
those traits in the history of the origins of Israel which 



82 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

throw back into the earliest foretime the Messianic 
hopes and the thought of a universal purpose of grace, 
which were both in reality mental achievements of the 
later centuries. We include under these particularly 
the treatment of the patriarchal age, and above all the 
life of Abraham. On this territory of dawning fore- 
history the prophetic narrator has operated with great 
freedom."* The assumption underlying this sceptical 
criticism is, that the rudimentary initial stage in a 
process of religious development cannot possibly an- 
ticipate the features of a more advanced stage, but 
must necessarily present the religious element in hu- 
man nature under the rudest form. A comparatively 
pure monotheistic idea of God is wholly foreign to 
this early stage. The development which ends in 
ethical monotheism must start from fetish worship. 
In like manner the idea of a universal religion cannot 
possibly appear in the initial period. Universalism 
can come only after particularism, the worship of tri- 
bal or national gods, has had its day. Now these po- 
sitions, so confidently laid down by naturalism, are by 
no means so axiomatic as writers like Kuenen imagine. 
On grounds of observation, e.g., and in the interests 
of a purely scientific study of religion, it has been 
questioned whether fetishism be not rather a degener- 
ate form of an antecedent purer religion than the 
primitive form of religion from which all religious de- 
velopment starts.f The truth seems to be, that the 
early form of all historical religions is not fetish wor- 
ship, but a comparatively pure, though unstable, mo- 



* " Die Religion," vol. ii., pp. 337, 338. 

f This is the view advocated by Max Miiller in his Hibbert Lect- 
ures, "On the Origin and Development of Religion." 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REV EL A TION. 83 

notheism. The first thoughts of men' on religion are 
better than their second, and their last and best 
thoughts are in a sense a return to their first. In ac- 
cordance with this view, the initial stage of a religion 
may, without postulating any supernatural revelation, 
contain in it in germinal form all that is to come out 
of it. This law of development was exemplified in 
the case of Christ, by the admission of even rational- 
istic critics like Dr. Baur. Why not also in the case 
of Abraham, if he was the starting point of the de- 
velopment which culminated in the ethical monothe- 
ism and universalism of Hebrew prophecy ? Why 
should there not appear in him the blossom of which 
the prophetic ideal is the ripe fruit ? Is it thought 
that he came at too early a period in the world's his- 
tory for this to be possible ? But is it not the fact, 
demonstrated by comparative philology, that at a still 
earlier period the primitive Aryans worshipped the. 
one God under the name of Dyauspitar — Heaven- 
Father. Why then should it seem impossible for 
Abraham to have a comparatively pure idea of God ? 
Or is it the universalism of the Abrahamic creed that 
seems too advanced for the time ? It is a well-known 
fact that a universal religion appeared in India some 
six centuries before the Christian era; why should 
not the dream at least of such religion appear still 
earlier in Chaldea ? The idea of all nations being 
bound together and blessed by one religious faith, ad- 
vanced and modern as it seems, is after all a simple 
thought which might readily occur to devout minds 
even in the grey dawn or childhood of the world's his- 
tory. Wherever God is conceived of as one, there 
mankind also may be conceived of as one. The 



84 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

ancient Aryans who looked up to heaven and said 
" Father," must have looked on all men as brethren. 
The instincts of human nature, even in savages, are 
able to make the synthesis between one God and one 
humanity. Hence Paul, in his address on Mar's hill 
to Athenian polytheists, connects together the two 
ideas of one God, maker of heaven and earth, and one 
humanity made of one blood, evidently assuming that 
the acceptance of the one idea would carry along with 
it the acceptance of the other. These ideas, therefore, 
cannot reasonably be regarded as too advanced for 
Abraham, even regarding him as an ordinary man ; 
and if we regard him as an exceptionally great man, 
one of the world's epoch-making men, — and such ap- 
pear in all ages, — his capacity to entertain such 
thoughts becomes still more credible. Students of 
history recognise in Zoroaster a probable contempo- 
rary of Abraham, and regard him as one who played 
among his people, the Persian Aryans, the important 
role of a religious reformer, teaching them to believe 
in one God ethically conceived as the patron of right- 
eousness, and maker of all good things in the world.* 
If this view be well founded, then Zoroaster was one 
of the world's great characters appearing in the morn- 
ing of human history. If the Bible picture of Abra- 
ham, — in which he is represented as the introducer of 
a new pure religion, as a man who by faith lived in 
the future and cherished the aspiration to be a bene- 
factor to the human race, — be even approximately 
correct, then the Hebrew Patriarch is simply another 
to be added to the select band of world-historical ini- 
tiators. 



* Vide Bunsen, "God in History," vol. i., p. 276. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REVELATION. 85 

But it is not necessary to ascribe so much origi- 
nality to Abraham in order to vindicate for the self- 
manifestation of God in history, even at his early 
epoch, the character of a revelation of a purpose of 
grace. At no stage in the history of revelation is it 
necessary to assume a full understanding or consci- 
ousness, on the part of the instruments of revelation, 
of the purposes for which God was using them ; and 
least of all is this probable in the initial stage. It is 
distinctly indicated in the New Testament that the 
prophets did not fully understand the meaning of 
their own prophecies; and we may well believe that 
Abraham did not possess perfect insight into the sig- 
nificance of the impulses that were at work in his 
soul. For the purposes of our argument we can afford 
to admit that the prophets, or whoever wrote the 
patriarchal history, give in their narrative the Divine 
significance of the events in Abraham's life, as it lay 
revealed to their view by the course of Israel's history, 
rather than the meaning which these bore to Abra- 
ham's own mind. It is enough for our purpose if the 
main outlines of the story be historically correct : 
that Abraham left his native land in search of another 
place of abode, that the migration proceeded in part 
at least from religious motives, and that the wanderer, 
sojourning in the strange land, had a deep-seated 
presentiment and hope that from him should spring 
a people destined to play a remarkable part in the 
history of the world. Of the import of these events 
in his life, and of the feelings connected with them, 
Abraham himself might have a very dim and inade- 
quate idea. His departure from his native country 
might be the result of an irresistible impulse, rather 
5 



S6 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

than of a deliberate purpose ; the religious motive 
might take the form, not of an altered view of God 
distinctly formulated by deliberate reflection, but 
rather of an undefinable dissatisfaction with prevalent 
religious beliefs and practices ; the hope of founding 
a nation peculiar in character and vocation, might be 
nothing more in consciousness than a persistent pre- 
sentiment of which no account could be given, a sort 
of fixed idea, for the cherishing of which a man 
might be reckoned a madman or a sage, according as 
the event fell out. If this were ascertained to be 
Abraham's actual state of mind, then it might have 
to be admitted that his life, as narrated in Genesis, 
has undergone considerable colouring in the hands of 
the historian. Still the residuum of fact would form 
a sufficient basis for the revelation of a Divine inten- 
tion. In those facts one might see revealed a purpose 
of God to separate this man from his own people and 
to make him the progenitor of a new race which 
should permanently occupy the land wherein he 
found rest after his wanderings, and which should 
be there an elect people, worshippers of the true 
God, and destined eventually to become missionaries 
of the true religion to the whole earth. It was just 
such a Divine intention the author of the Book of 
Genesis, call him a prophet if you will, saw in the 
facts. From the point of view of such a Divine 
intention he wrote the history, striking the keynote 
in the very first sentence, which represents Jehovah as 
saying to Abraham : " Get thee out of thy country, 
and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, 
unto a land that I will show thee : and I will make of 
thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 87 

thy name great ; and thou shalt be a blessing : and I 
will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that 
curseth thee : and in thee shall all families of the 
earth be blessed." This was what God said to Abra- 
ham, if not in so many words audible to the ear, then 
by the impulses which He awakened in the patriarch's 
heart. This was what the history of Abraham said 
to the prophet's own spirit. It was his way of read, 
ing the story, the construction which his prophetic 
insight taught him to put on the facts. And the 
event showed that the construction was right. If 
God be in history at all, the prophetic hypothesis is 
verified. The Power who is at work in the world did 
mean in the events of Abraham's life just what the 
prophetic narrator says He meant. In that life God 
revealed Himself as One having in view, as His end 
in guiding the course of history, the religious well- 
being of mankind, and adopting for that purpose the 
method of election. The revelation lies in the events 
themselves; the purpose served by the Bible narra- 
tive, beyond the mere recording of the facts, is to en- 
able us to see clearly the Divine intention, to see it 
more clearly than we should have done, had we had 
nothing more than a bald statement of the facts, 
more clearly than the hero of the story himself saw it. 
In the foregoing observations I have admitted that 
the prophetic narrative of Abraham's life puts more 
meaning into that life than it had or could have to 
Abraham. It is important to point out, however, 
that the amount of light thrown on the Divine inten- 
tions is not greatly if at all in excess of what we might 
expect in the initial stage of revelation. The narra- 
tive does not imply that Abraham possessed a per- 



88 THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 

fectly adequate or pure idea of God, or a full knowl- 
edge as to the extent or manner of the blessing to be 
conferred on him and his descendants, and through 
them on the world. As respects the former, the name 
for God in the patriarchal period, while expressive of 
truth so far as it goes, comes far short of the concep- 
tion of God suggested by the crowning stage of reve- 
lation. It is El-shaddai, God Almighty.* It conveys 
the idea that God is the Maker of the world, and at 
the same time above the world, not to be confounded 
with nature as in the Pagan religions, which practically 
are but different forms of nature-worship. The name 
thus expresses a most important truth ; no one can 
realise how important till he has studied the religions 
of the world, and observed how completely God and 
nature are identified, to the utter exclusion of all right 
ideas of the relations of God and the world as Creator 
and creature, Maker and made. In connection with 
these studies we learn to appreciate at its due value 
the revelation of God contained in the very first chap- 
ter of the Book of Genesis, which sets forth God as 
the Creator of heaven and earth, independent of the 
world, existing before it, bringing it into being by the 
word of His power, and making man in His own im- 
age. Still this first revelation, important as it is, is 
rudimentary in comparison with that made in after 
ages when the purpose of grace was more unfolded. 
It amounts to little more than a publication of the 
truths of natural religion, a republication, we may 
call it, if we conceive of. man as having received a 
primitive revelation of the simple elements of religion, 



* Gen. xvii. i ; Exod. vi. 3. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 89 

the light of which he afterwards lost. It tells us only 
at most that God is One, that He is above the world, 
that He made the world by His power, and that He 
is a Being who, in His moral nature, in some respects 
resembles man. Truths, these, not to be despised; 
nay, truths which serve for a foundation to those 
which more especially form the revelation of grace. 
Still they are nothing more than foundation ; they 
but conduct us to the threshold of revelation proper. 
The raison d'etre of revelation is not to teach us these 
truths. If the Book which contains the record of rev- 
elation gives to these truths a place in its pages, it is 
because they are presuppositions which we must bring 
with us to the study of the higher revelation. If the 
place assigned to such truths appear larger than seems 
due to subordinate matters, it is because men have 
been slow to learn even the lower truths concerning 
God, not to speak of the higher. That God is the 
Creator, and that He is a moral Governor, the sacred 
book asserts and reasserts, because even these truths 
are extensively ignored, and because till these are laid 
to heart it is hopeless to seek to gain recognition for 
the highest idea of God as a Redeemer. The inculca- 
tion of the lower truths is a means to an ulterior end ; 
they are not taught for their own sake. 

Returning from this digression, I remark that the 
patriarchal name for God shows that the patriarchs 
in their theology were still little in advance of the 
standing point of a purified natural religion. And 
when we look with a thoughtful eye into Abraham's 
history we find evidence that he still needed to be 
raised above the influence of some of the superstitions 
prevalent among the peoples who had not retained 



9 o 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 



the true God in their knowledge. I refer specially 
here to what may legitimately be inferred from the 
narrative relating to the sacrifice of Isaac. There 
can be little doubt that that remarkable passage in 
the patriarch's history stands in some relation to the 
custom of human sacrifice, which was one of the most 
characteristic features of pagan Semitic worship, and, 
in the opinion of some writers, found its way into 
Canaan from Babylon. We may assume that Abra- 
ham was familiar with the horrid practice ; and it is 
every way likely that the knowledge he possessed sup- 
plied the needful fulcrum for the " temptation " to 
which he was subjected. The fact that the votaries 
of Baal or Moloch, the Divine Lord and King, were 
ready to make their own children pass through the 
fire in his honour, made it possible for Abraham to 
entertain as a Divine suggestion or command the 
thought of offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice in proof 
of his devotion. Was it not due to his God that he 
should show that he loved Him more than the dear- 
est object of affection, even though it should be an 
only son through whom alone he could attain to the 
fulfilment of his hope for the future ? If he was not 
willing to make such a sacrifice, did he not come be- 
hind the idolaters from whom he had separated him- 
self, in the sincerity and intensity of his religious zeal ? 
One could imagine such questions suggesting them- 
selves to the mind of a devout man placed in Abra- 
ham's circumstances, without any Divine communi- 
cation. Supernatural interposition was needed, not 
so much to put the thought into Abraham's mind, as 
to conduct him safely through the temptation which 
it brought to him, and to lift him permanently above 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF REVELATION. gi 

the crude ideas of God which made such a temptation 
possible. It is probably in this direction we should 
look for a solution of the difficulties connected with 
the moral aspects of the episode, which have so much 
exercised the wits of apologists. In his able work, 
" Ruling Ideas in Early Ages," the late Dr. Mozley 
endeavours to vindicate the morality of the command 
given to Abraham to sacrifice his son, by insisting 
that it must be looked at in connection with the ideas 
prevailing in that age respecting the absolute right of 
fathers to dispose of the lives of their children. The 
defence involves the admission that these ideas were 
crude, and the morality associated with them very im- 
perfect ; and the plea is, that God, in making a reve- 
lation, was obliged to take men up at the point where 
He found them, and so gradually lead them on to 
higher things. The aim of the author in the whole 
argument is, to show that God could do, or command 
to be done, or approve when done, in one age what 
neither ought to be done in a later, more advanced 
time, when men's moral ideas had undergone a change 
for the better, nor could even so much as be believed 
on any evidence to be the objects of Divine approba- 
tion or the subjects of Divine commands. The line 
of thought is valuable and fruitful, and might be ap- 
plied to other subjects, and to the same subjects in 
other ways, besides those to which prominence is giv- 
en in the work referred to. What Dr. Mozley empha- 
sizes in the case of Abraham's offering of Isaac, is the 
right of a parent, according to the ideas of the time, 
to sacrifice the life of his son. It was then thought 
that a man might dispose of a son as if he were a 
thing, not a person ; therefore it was possible for Abra- 



9 2 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 



ham to believe on proper evidence that God required 
this of him ; therefore also God might in fact require 
it for a worthy end. But there is more than the right 
to be thought of; there is the sense of obligation, the 
idea in Abraham's mind that he ought to slay his son 
as an act of religious homage, an idea present to his 
thoughts antecedent to any Divine command, and 
forming the natural basis for the whole experience to 
be passed through. If we assume this idea to have 
been in Abraham's mind, then we cannot only under- 
stand the possibility of the temptation, but can see 
that a very definite special purpose was served beyond 
the general one of trying his faith — that, viz., of de- 
livering the patriarch finally and completely from the 
fascinating influence of surrounding superstitions, by 
showing him that his God was one who desired indeed 
to be loved supremely, with single-hearted devotion, 
but who delighted not in sacrifices of blood. This 
'use of the experience was perfectly compatible with 
the trial of faith which the narrative represents as its 
chief purpose. That trial arose out of a conflict be- 
tween two duties — the duty, on the one hand, of of- 
fering up Isaac in sacrifice in obedience to a Divine 
command, and the duty, on the other, of continuing 
to believe firmly in the Divine promise. The trial re- 
mains the same, on any theory as to the way in which 
Abraham came to be convinced that the former of 
the two duties was incumbent on him. Dr. Mozley's 
theory is, that conviction was produced by a direct 
Divine command, recognisable as such by miraculous 
accompaniments. The alternative theory is, that the 
state of Abraham's mind in reference to religion was 
such that conviction might come to him through the 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 93 

ordinary action of his conscience. In either case it 
might be said with truth that God spoke to him. It 
is only a question as to the mode of speaking ; as in 
reference to the design of the communication, it is a 
question whether God meant to teach one lesson only 
or two — a general one, His unconditional power to 
fulfil His promise, and a special one, the difference 
between the true God and Baal in ethical character. 
The latter was a lesson which it was worthy of the 
God of revelation to teach, it was indeed a most im- 
portant contribution to the self-manifestation of God 
as the God of grace. And it is not derogatory to the 
character of Abraham to suppose that he needed the 
lesson. To imagine him susceptible to the fascina- 
tions of Moloch worship, is not to make him " a fol- 
lower and disciple of the Canaanite's."* It must be 
borne in mind, that the very sincerity of the sojourn- 
er in the land of Canaan, as a servant of God, would 
tend in some ways to lay him open to the sinister in- 
fluence of surrounding superstitions. The practice 
of human sacrifice was an expression in a perverted 
form of the great truth that the Divine interest must 
take precedence of every human interest. While re- 
garding with horror the manner in which effect was 
given to the principle, the devout Hebrew could not 
but feel respect for the earnestness which shrunk not 
from the supreme test of subjection to its behests. 
But if such was his feeling, we can easily see the need 
of some special discipline to enable him to separate 
the spirit of devotion from the offensive form in which 



* Dr. Mozley adduces it as an argument against the view given 
above, that it does so degrade Abraham. 



94 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 



it clothed itself in prevalent religious custom ; and no 
better can be imagined than that described in the 
record of his life.* 

The foregoing observations go to show that Abra- 
ham's idea of God stood in need of purification and 
development. I now remark, that if his conception 
of the Divine character was imperfect, his knowledge 
of the Divine purpose, as judged by the record, was 
by no means complete. He had a presentiment that 
God was to bless his descendants, and through them 
the world ; but he had but dim rudimentary ideas of 
the nature of the blessing to be conferred. Material 
things occupied a large place in his thoughts. He 
left his native abode in quest of a land that God was 
to show him ; and that his seed should inherit this 
land was the great object of his hope. That a re- 
ligious element also entered into his conception of the 
blessing, may be inferred from the fact that religion 
was one of the springs out of which the migration 
flowed. But we are not required by anything in the 
narrative to suppose that Abraham's ideas of the 
spiritual side of the promise were in advance of what 
is to be looked for at the initial stage of revelation. 
It was the patriarch's hope, doubtless, that his chil- 
dren would be sincere worshippers of the true God, 
the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, and the 
righteous Judge of the sons of men ; and he might 
also hope that through the people that should spring 
from his loins other nations would be brought to the 
knowledge of the same God, and thus be led to 



* For some excellent remarks in the line of those offered in the 
text, see Smyth's " Old Faiths in New Light," pp. 99-104. 



THE CHIEF DESIGN OF RE VELA TION. 95 

abandon their idols. Beyond this, however, his view 
did not greatly extend. The higher truths of revela- 
tion had not yet risen above the horizon. 

Yet let us not imagine on this account that revela- 
tion had not yet begun to show itself in its distinctive 
proper character as a revelation of grace. The 
flower, though not the fruitage of grace appeared in 
the patriarchal revelation. And as the flower is a 
prophecy of the fruit, it may be said that in the 
flower Abraham saw unconsciously the fruit, Christ's 
day, and rejoiced in it. There was grace in all God's 
dealings with Abraham. It was an act of grace to 
show him the falsity of the prevailing religion, and 
to reveal to him the pure truth of natural religion, 
the worship of God the Creator and Moral Governor. 
It was a further act of grace to separate him from 
his people, that he might forget old .customs and, as 
a stranger in a strange land, worship the true God. 
There was grace also in the promise of a seed, and 
of a land in which they should dwell as in a peculiar 
sense a people of God. The covenant by which God 
appropriated Abraham's seed as His people, and gave 
Himself to them to be specially their God, was a 
covenant of grace. The lesson on sacrifice was also 
a remarkable manifestation- of grace, for while it ne- 
gatively revealed the humanity of the Divine charac- 
ter, it positively revealed God's delight in self-sacri- 
fice, and thus brought to light possibilities of sacrifice 
for God Himself, which one could hardly dare to re- 
gard even as possibilities until they had actually been 
realised. The Divine oath uttered on the occasion, 
as a passionate expression of the admiration awaken- 
ed by the sublime spectacle presented by the patri- 



96 the chief design of re vela tion. 

arch offering up his son, is specially significant as 
affording a glimpse into the inmost spirit of God. 
Looking down on the sacrifice, God exclaims: " As I 
live, this is a great heroic deed ; it shall not go unre- 
warded. Out of the son whom this man is willing 
to part with shall spring a seed multitudinous as the 
stars or the sand." He could swear by no greater, 
therefore He sware by Himself; so, as the writer of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews finely points out, making 
Himself a Mediator, or middle party between God 
and Abraham. God swearing made Himself in con- 
descension inferior to God sworn by. That is, God, 
in taking an oath, did a thing analogous to God be- 
coming man. The acts were kindred, being both acts 
of condescension and love. In these two acts, as in 
covenant-making, God stoops down from His majesty 
to the weakness and want and low estate of man. In 
covenant-making God made Himself a debtor to His 
creatures, and gave them a right to claim what is in 
reality a matter of favor. In taking an oath, God 
submitted to indignity imposed by man's distrust, 
and, instead of standing on His truth, put Himself 
under oath, that there might be an end of doubt or 
gainsaying. In becoming man, God condescended to 
man's sin, and submitted to be as a Sinner that sin- 
ners might be delivered from moral evil. Grace ap- 
pears in all these acts in an ever ascending degree. 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 

The chief end of revelation being to make known 
a purpose of grace in which all mankind were inter- 
ested, it might have been expected a priori, that the 
revelation would be made at once, per saltum, and by 
miracle to all concerned. Such a purpose, one would 
say, can brook no delay, but must be in haste to bless 
its objects ; can be guilty of no partiality, but must 
treat all with like favour ; and must reach its full ac- 
complishment, not by a slow progress from lower to 
higher degrees of blessing, but at a bound. The 
method actually pursued was as unlike this imaginary 
one as possible, and more in accordance with the 
analogy of nature and ordinary Providence. Revela- 
tion took the form of an historical movement, subject 
to the ordinary laws of historic development, and ex- 
hibiting the usual characteristics of movements sub- 
ject to these laws. The redemptive purpose of God 
was not ushered into the world a full-grown fact ; it 
evolved itself by a regular process of growth, and the 
process was marked by three salient features : slow 
movement, partial action, and advance to the perfect 
from the more or less imperfect, not only in know- 
ledge, but also in morality. All these features may 
be and have been made the occasion of objection to 



IOO THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 

the reality of a Divine revelation ; and it may be 
worth while to consider how far they are compatible 
with the idea of a revelation in general, and more 
especially with the idea of a revelation of God as the 
God of Grace. The present chapter shall be devoted 
to the examination of this problem. 

I begin the discussion with the general remark, 
that it ought to raise no prejudice against the divinity 
of an alleged revelation, that it assumes the form of 
an historical movement. It is worthy of God to pro- 
ceed in this way. " It became Him for whom are all 
things, and by whom are all things,'' in making a 
special revelation, to act in accordance with the laws 
which He observes in making a general revelation of 
Himself as the Creator and Governor through nature 
and ordinary Providence. Adherence to this method, 
even in a supernatural revelation, ensures that this 
higher self-manifestation shall bear a stamp of na- 
turalness, as opposed to the magical character that 
must attach to all Divine action which stands in no 
relation to the course of nature. A redemptive 
process from which the element of time was elim- 
inated, would have been a thaumaturgical per- 
formance so utterly unlike the world we live in, where 
all things are subject to the law of growth, that it 
would have been hard for us, living in such a world, 
to believe that it could be the work of the same God 
who made and governs the universe. It would have 
been a phenomenon of the same kind as had been 
the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt by lifting her 
up and carrying her through the air to the promised 
land as an eagle carries her young till they have 
learned to fly. It so happens, indeed, that in the 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. \q\ 

song of Moses, that great historical achievement is 
actually represented under this very figure: " As an 
eagle stirreth up her nest," wrote the sacred poet, " flut- 
tereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, 
taketh them, beareth them on her wings : so the Lord 
alone did lead him, and there was no strange god 
with him ! "* And in a high ideal sense the represen- 
tation is true. Yet it is only an ideal ; it is poetry, 
in which all secondary ordinary causes are lost sight 
of, and the Divine agency alone is recognised. Never- 
theless such second causes were not in reality ex- 
cluded. God led His people from Egypt to Palestine 
like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron ; and 
the process was of much longer duration than the 
poetic figure implies. Nor did the work of deliver- 
ing Israel lose any of its divineness by being carried 
on slowly and by human instrumentality. On the 
contrary, it thereby only came to have a history full 
of moral interest, and throwing much light on the 
character of God. Had Israel been delivered in a 
purely magical way, lifted up out of the land of bond- 
age and set down a few hours after in the land of 
promise, it would certainly have been a stupendous 
miracle ; yet it would have been a poor display of the 
Divine character compared with that furnished by 
the actual method. In the imaginary case we should 
have seen only the Divine omnipotence manifested 
for a moment ; in the actual case we behold a mani- 
festation of all the Divine attributes, power, wisdom, 
patience, faithfulness, unwearied loving care — not a 
momentary manifestation only, but one extending 



1 02 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

over a lengthened series of years, supplying material 
for a history rich in pathetic stirring incident which 
endures for aye, an imperishable monument to the 
praise of Israel's God. 

The naturalness of the way in which God redeemed 
Israel, it thus appears, was far from being a fault. In 
like manner the same characteristic is no fault in the 
method pursued in the higher work of redemption, 
whereof that of Israel in Egypt was in some respects 
a type. The naturalness of that method is rather a 
point in its favour, to be emphasized by the apologist 
as far as the facts will allow. And we might go great 
lengths in such an argument without exceeding the 
limits of truth. The whole process of revelation 
was so natural that it might easily seem on first view 
to be nothing more. That it was something more, 
that there was a supernatural element within the 
natural, we shall see hereafter ; meantime the thing 
to be noted is, how natural, how much like an ordi- 
nary historical movement, was the course of events 
through which God revealed and brought to its con- 
summation His purpose of grace towards mankind. 
In the first place, the drama of revelation begins at 
the beginning, and, though it concerns the whole 
human race, has to do at the starting with a single 
individual. Such a commencement shows at once 
how thoroughly historical the process is going to be, 
for it is characteristic of great historical movements, 
to begin with individuals and to expand gradually 
from them as centres, or to grow up from them as 
seeds, till they become at length world-wide pheno- 
mena. A revelation which begins with the call of 
Abraham is evidently going to take the form of an 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



103 



organic evolution, passing by a slow secular process 
through successive stages till it reach its final phase ; 
from an individual man to a family, from a family to 
a nation, from a nation to a representative Man in 
whom a new beginning is made, and the universal 
element for the first time clearly appears, and from 
the representative Man to all the nations of the earth. 
Surely a magnificent world-historical movement, ex- 
tending through the ages, worthy of the first cause 
and last end of all, approving itself by its very 
leisureliness to be the work of Him whose mode of 
action is slow but sure, never hasting, yet never for- 
getting His purpose ! 

Yes, it may be objected, very sublime and very 
God-like and God-worthy in some respects ; but is the 
delay involved in this method compatible with the 
idea of Grace? Doubtless it is God's way, as the 
Governor of the world, to work after the fashion de- 
scribed. The moral order of the world, as even 
pagan sages discerned, moves towards its end slowly 
if surely. One day is with the Lord, as a Power 
making for righteousness, as a thousand years, in 
respect of the leisureliness of His action ; and a thou- 
sand years as one day, in respect of mindfulness of 
His purpose. But ought not God, as a Gracious 
Power to act in a different manner? Does not so 
slow a movement as that which characterizes the 
moral order of the world, exclude grace altogether? 
Can we who believe in grace avail ourselves of this 
feature of Divine action ; have we not adopted an 
idea of God which is inconsistent with the fact-basis ? 

On a superficial view, this objection may appear 
plausible ; but on reflection it is seen to be ground- 



1 04 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

less. It does seem as if the slow process of nature 
or ordinary Providence were too cold-blooded, so to 
speak, for the warm temperament of Grace; as if a 
Divine Love sufficiently intense to put itself to the 
trouble of interposing in human affairs for the accom- 
plishment of a beneficent design, would be unable to 
restrain itself from hastening on with accelerated pace 
towards fulfilment. On the hypothesis that God had 
a gracious thought in His heart towards the human 
race, as He is reported to have declared when He 
summoned Abraham to leave his native land, how, we 
are prone to ask, can we imagine him going about 
the execution of his plan for the good of humanity 
with such wearisome deliberation ? Is- the slowness 
of the evolution not proof that the alleged purpose is 
not a reality? But the sufficient answer to such ques- 
tions is, that Grace, however willing to move quickly, 
must take its rate of progress from the nature of the 
work it has on hand. To speak more definitely, it 
must take the recipients of benefit along with it, and 
move at a pace with which they can keep up. God 
does not manifest Himself in grace merely in order 
to make a display, but that those to whom He mani- 
fests Himself may get the good intended for them. 
Now, it is very possible for love, by too great eager- 
ness to show itself in action, to defeat its own design 
to bless its objects. A father, e.g., in his inordinate 
affection for his child, may give him all good things 
at once, unable to delay till the child have reached 
the years of discretion, and so in effect curse instead 
of blessing his offspring. How often does it happen 
in this way that children get too much of a parent's 
blessing ! Children, to be truly blessed, must be ed- 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



105 



ucated for receiving, appreciating, and rightly using 
the gifts of parental love ; and for this end, lapse of 
time, patience, waiting, is indispensable. In like man- 
ner, Divine Love, however ardent, must be content 
to move slowly, because men need to be trained by 
faith and patience and moral discipline for the in- 
heritance of the promise. This is a familiar truth 
with reference to the sanctification of the individual, 
but it is equally true in reference to the redemption 
of the race ; nay, is much more so, for the moral 
training of a race is a greatly more complicated affair 
than that of an individual. It takes twenty years for 
a child to arrive at manhood, and we ought not to 
wonder if it take twenty centuries for the human 
race to arrive at its majority, and to be prepared by 
the discipline to which it has been subjected all that 
time for appreciating the great characteristic privilege 
of the Christian era, that of standing in a relation of 
sonship to God. Nor does the long delay, though it 
last for millenniums, make grace cease to be grace, 
though it may tend to make its gracious character 
less obvious. Grace submitting to delay is only love 
consenting to be guided by wisdom. Only on the 
assumption that this slow method of procedure left 
in an unsaved state all who lived in the epoch of 
preparation, could its gracious character be seriously 
questioned. We shall see further on that such an 
assumption is groundless. 

As little would the gracious character of the whole 
process of revelation be compromised, if it should 
appear that at certain stages in its course the actual 
Divine manifestations wore an aspect almost of an- 
tagonism to grace, as for example in the lawgiving. 



1 06 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

Paul has made this thought a commonplace by his 
comparison of the law to the tutors and governors 
under which a child is placed till he arrive at his ma- 
jority. The truth of the statement becomes, if possi- 
ble, still clearer when we regard it in the light of our 
Lord's parable concerning the law of growth in the 
kingdom of God, as analogous to that of grain, pro- 
ducing first the blade, then the ear, then the full ripe 
corn. In the kingdom of nature growth not only in- 
volves delay which exercises the patience of the hus- 
bandman, but it proceeds by well-marked stages, all 
of which must be passed through ere it reach its con- 
summation in a crop of ripe grain. And one of these 
stages, that of the green ear, is very unlike that of 
maturity. We see this more clearly in the case of 
fruit than in the case of grain. How unpalatable is 
green fruit, with its sour juices setting the teeth on 
edge ! Yet it is a stage on the way to the mellow 
fruit of late autumn, whose sweet taste delights the 
eater. The acidity is opposed to the sweetness, yet 
it is a phase in the natural process of growth which 
has sweetness for its goal and final cause. In like 
manner Law may be opposed to Gospel, and yet be a 
phase in a revelation which has grace for its guiding 
idea and terminus. The law comes because it is good 
in its season, good for the destined recipients of bless- 
ing. For grace must accommodate itself to the needs 
of its object, and deal with him as he requires to be 
dealt with at any given time. Accommodation is an 
essential principle in the method of a revelation of 
grace. The gracious revealer, while ever keeping in 
view his ultimate design, must connect the particular 
recipient with that design in a way suited to his whole 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



I07 



position. In accordance with this rule, after the 
promise came the law. There was first the beautiful 
blossom of the promise in the patriarchal time, then 
the green fruit under the law, then the ripe fruit ap- 
peared with the advent of Christ full of grace and 
truth. By the nature of the case the ripe fruit tarried 
long; for the legal discipline which was designed to 
prepare men for enjoying it demanded a lengthened 
period within which to work out its. effect. During 
the lapse of that intermediate stage it might well 
seem as if God had forgotten to be gracious. But in 
truth He was only taking pains to insure that the 
ripe fruit, when it came, should have a maximum of 
sweetness to the human palate. The whole process 
from beginning to end was long, very long ; but it 
issued in something well worth waiting for, which 
could not have been so good had it come much soon- 
er, especially had it come without the intervention of 
the legal green ear. It was well that the blade of 
the promise came first, for men must know what they 
have to wait for, at least dimly; and in representing 
it as coming when it did, the Scriptures give a 
thoroughly credible account, for when should the 
blade appear if not at the beginning? Surely not 
when the green ear is well advanced, as those in 
effect say who make the promise to Abraham a mere 
invention of the prophets. But the promise having 
once keen given, it was well also that men had to 
bear acted discipline of law, that they might 

dy weary of rules, and thoroughly drilled 
.erase of their moral senses, and on both ac- 
glad to welcome the day-dawn of the Gospel 
era bringing redemption and liberty. 



108 THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 

The foregoing train of thought may suffice to re- 
move objections to the method of revelation based 
on the long delay which it involved before the end 
aimed at was reached. We may now, therefore, pro- 
ceed to notice the objections which maybe suggested 
by the second feature incident to that method speci- 
fied at the commencement, viz., the partiality of Di- 
vine action in the earlier stages of revelation. The 
self-revealing God proceeded by the way of election, 
and had dealings first only with one individual, and 
thereafter only with one nation. How strange this 
exclusiveness, this seeming indifference to all the rest 
of the world, on the hypothesis that the purpose of 
grace really concerned all mankind ! Now, there is 
certainly here a superficial antinomy requiring resolu- 
tion, and the resolution is to be found in a correct 
conception of the idea of election and of what it in- 
volves. Election, then, does not signify a limitation 
of Divine sympathy to all intents and purposes to 
the elect, or a monopoly of Divine favour enjoyed by 
the latter. The election of Abraham and of Israel 
did not imply that all the rest of mankind were left 
without the pale of God's gracious purpose, and 
could share in none of its benefits, temporal or 
eternal. Some members of the elect race might 
think it did ; all of them would be tempted so to 
think, for God's purpose that the Gentiles should be 
fellow-heirs was hid from them, hid in God, as the 
Apostle Paul says,* and they might readily mistake a 
relative, temporary, and economical preference for an 
absolute, eternal, -and intrinsic one. But the mystery, 



* Eph. iii. 9. 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. i 09 

though hid in God, was not hid from Him, nor did it 
remain at any time wholly dormant or inoperative in 
the Divine mind. The election was simply a method 
of procedure adopted by God in His wisdom, by 
which He designed to fit the few for blessing the 
many, one for blessing all. That being so, the apolo- 
gist's task, in addressing himself to the study of the 
religious history of mankind, would be to inquire 
what a gracious purpose, having in view the whole 
world, but proceeding by the method of election, 
would lead us to expect regarding the outside nations 
and their religious condition, and then to consider 
how far the facts correspond to theoretical expecta- 
tions, and how far therefore the hypothesis of a reve- 
lation of grace so conducted is historically verified. 
This is the attitude which it becomes the apologist, 
believing in such a revelation, to take up in studying 
the phenomena of ethnic religion. To one occupy- 
ing this attitude, that study will prove a much more 
genial and hopeful one than it can possibly be to 
those who imagine that the principle of election ne- 
cessarily implies, with reference to the Gentiles, abso- 
lute ignorance of God and utter exclusion from all 
the benefits of salvation. 

It is impossible here to launch out upon such an 
extensive inquiry as I have just sketched ; but I may 
offer a few cursory remarks on the question, what the 
idea of revelation advocated in this volume would 
lead us to expect as to the religious condition of the 
peoples outside the pale of the chosen race. In the 
first place, then, from the universality of the Divine 
purpose, it might be confidently inferred that the 
heathen nations were all along the object of God's 
6 



1 1 o THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

benignant compassionate regard. The " mystery hid 
in God " must have guided the whole course of Divine 
Providence as the Ruler of the nations ; the purpose 
of grace, universal in its scope, must all through the 
ages have influenced the Divine dealings with the 
children of men. It would not therefore surprise us 
if, in prosecuting our studies in ethnic religion, we 
found reason to think that God, while revealing Him- 
self specially and systematically to the people of the 
election, did not altogether hide Himself from other 
peoples, but gave them as much light as might suffice 
to make the darkness of their night tolerable till the 
dawn should arrive ; raising up now and then, here 
and there, men of comparatively pure, vigorous, 
moral sentiments, and clear religious intuitions, whose 
wise thoughts and worthy life should be as starlight 
amid the gloom of night. Nor should we think it 
necessary in the interests of revealed religion to dis- 
parage these prophets of paganism. On the contrary, 
we should gladly hail the lights of pagan religions, 
both because of the guidance which they gave to the 
peoples sitting in darkness, and likewise because of 
the help which they yield to ourselves, as an aid to 
faith in revelation. For such an aid they do really 
supply. To be convinced of this, we have but to ask 
ourselves what inference might naturally be drawn 
were the night of paganism absolutely unrelieved by 
the presence of spiritual light. Would there not 
then be room for doubt whether God had a purpose 
of grace towards the nations? How reconcile the 
existence of such a purpose with the total neglect of 
its objects, the utter abandonment of them to dark- 
ness and misery? That a beneficent being should 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 1 1 1 

cherish a gracious purpose, and for a time not execute 
it fully, is conceivable ; but one would certainly ex- 
pect to find the objects of the purpose treated all 
along in a manner that was congruous to the purpose, 
and conveyed hints at least of the ultimate fulfilment. 
But on the other hand, the method of election 
having been adopted for realizing the universal design 
of Divine grace, we should be prepared to find traces 
of marked inferiority in the pagan religions as com- 
pared with the religion of the elect people. The 
method implies that the elect people must be sub- 
jected to a special discipline in an isolated state, in 
order to become eventually a source of blessing to 
the world ; and that again implies that the people 
who do not get the benefit of that discipline will 
thereby be put at a great disadvantage, and be, in 
comparison to the privileged race, as a street Arab to 
a carefully trained boy. We should expect to find 
on the side of Israel, as compared with the rest of 
the world, traces of the advantages resulting from a 
carefully conducted moral and religious education. 
If such traces were not forthcoming, we might very 
legitimately doubt either the reality of the election 
or its utility and necessity. And it is not difficult to 
conjecture of what nature the traces must be. If 
the election was real and requisite, then it will ap- 
pear on inquiry that it is very difficult for men left to 
their own resources to find out God, still more diffi- 
cult to retain Him in their knowledge, and to live up 
to their knowledge, and to make steady advances in 
Divine knowledge. Evidences will be forthcoming 
that the tendency of ethnic religion is not upwards, 
but downwards ; not to steady progress, but to de- 



1 1 2 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

generacy. On the other hand, a reverse tendency- 
ought to be observable in the religion of the elect 
people. The path of revelation within the favoured 
circle ought to be as the shining light, which shineth 
more and more unto the perfect day. If the facts 
should turn out to be in accordance with these anti- 
cipations, and students of comparative religion affirm 
that they are, then the hypothesis of an election will 
be verified. 

But, once more, while the fact of the election leads 
us to expect traces of the evil resulting from want of 
special religious training in the history of ethnic relig- 
ion, the purpose of the election would lead us to infer 
that the heathen nations would not be altogether 
without the benefit of a Divine education. The 
election was meant to prepare Israel for giving to the 
nations the benefit of the true religion. But that 
preparation would be to a certain extent fruitless, un- 
less the nations on their side were prepared for receiv- 
ing the benefit. Therefore, just because there was 
an election, we may infer that there must have been 
a providential guidance of the world's history in all 
departments of human affairs, in religion, philosophy, 
science, art, war, commerce, meant to prepare the 
world for receiving and making the most of the bene- 
fit when the elect people was ready to give it. In 
other words, the Pauline idea of a " fulness of the 
time " must have its truth, not merely in reference to 
the Jewish people, but in reference to the world at 
large. As is well known, various attempts have been 
made in recent years to give to this magnificent 
apologetic idea of the Apostle a catholic scope, and 
to use his words as a compendious formula for the 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. \ \ 3 

whole religious history of mankind ; the attraction 
of the phrase to philosophic minds lying in this, that 
it enables them to recognise the relative truth and 
worth of all the great religions of the world, while 
regarding Christianity as the absolute religion, the 
consummation of the great process of man's religious 
development. Hegel, e.g., represents all the princi- 
pal forms of religion as determined by the Idea of 
religion, as forms which could not but appear, as ap- 
pearing in no casual order, and as together constitut- 
ing a process which in the time fixed by the Everlast- 
ing Reason and Wisdom of God, culminated in the 
Christian religion ; that is to say, the religion in which 
God is perfectly manifested as Spirit, therefore the 
absolute, final, perennial religion. It is a fascinating 
conception of the world's religious history, and it is 
not surprising that the great philosopher concludes 
the introductory sketch of his " Religions-philoso- 
phie " by the remark : " This course of religion is the 
true theodicy; it shows all products of the spirit, 
every form of its self-knowledge, as necessary, be- 
cause the spirit is living, active, and has the impulse 
to pass through the whole series of its appearances to 
the consciousness of itself."* A similar conception 
of the world's religious history pervades the work of 
Bunsen, " God in History," and the essay of Bishop 
Temple on the education of the world, in " Essays 
and Reviews." Bunsen regards the consciousness 
which man has of God, — in one word, religion, — as 
the constant motive force in the history of nations ; 
and, believing as he does in a steady onward progress 



Religions-philosophie," vol. i., p. 44. 



ii4 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



in that history, he believes also in a progress in men's 
religious ideas from lower to higher forms, until they 
reach in Christianity their fulfilment. Temple con- 
ceives of the human race as " a colossal man, whose 
life reaches from the creation to the day of judg- 
ment," " passing through stages answering to those 
of any ordinary man, — childhood, youth, manhood, 
— and undergoing a training adapted in its course to 
those successive stages — in his childhood, subject to 
a discipline of positive rules ; in his youth, delivered 
to the influence of models ; and in full age, left to his 
own discretion." First come rules, then examples, 
then principles. First comes the law, then the Son 
of Man, then the gift of the Spirit. This view is a 
commonplace so far as it applies to the Hebrew race ; 
the peculiarity of the essay is the application of the 
theory to the Gentile races. " The natural religions, 
— shadows projected by the spiritual light within, — 
were all in reality systems of law given also by 
God, though not given by revelation, but by the 
working of nature, and consequently so distorted 
and adulterated that in lapse of time the divine 
element in them had almost perished. The poeti- 
cal gods of Greece, the legendary gods of Rome, 
the animal worship of Egypt, the sun worship of the 
East, all accompanied by systems of law and civil 
government springing from the same sources as them- 
selves, namely, the character and temper of the sev- 
eral nations, were the means of educating these peo- 
ples to similar purposes in the economy of Providence 
to that for which the Hebrews were destined." I am 
not aware that any objection on the score of principle 
can be taken to these fine schemes. So long as the 



THE ME TROD OF RE VELA TION. \ \ 5 

supremacy of Christianity as the great goal to which 
the history of the world was tending is recognised, 
and all the other religions of the world are embraced 
under the category of preparation, the believer in rev- 
elation may rest content. He may even receive pos- 
itive gratification from speculations which tend to 
confirm the true conception of revelation, as the evo- 
lution of a purpose of grace in which all mankind had 
an interest. At the same time, it is well not to allow 
our minds to be too much dazzled by such magnificent 
generalizations, and for this purpose to remember 
that they are open to a twofold criticism. In the 
first place, such grand schemes look very well on pa- 
per, but it may fairly be questioned whether they can 
be worked out, without extensive manipulation of 
historical facts. Then, secondly, the notion of prep- 
aration does not necessarily imply steady progress on- 
wards from one degree of religious development to 
another, all the stages being good in their own meas- 
ure, time, and place, till the last and highest degree 
is reached. We might conceive of the ethnic religions 
as being a preparation for Christianity in this sense, 
that they were an exhaustive list of experiments on 
man's part to find out God, which were appointed to 
be made that men might be thereby made ready to 
welcome the light from above, through the conscious- 
ness of the fruitft^lness of their own search. Paul re- 
gards the law given to Israel as a vain experiment 
that had to be made, that the Jewish people might 
gladly receive Christ when He came full of grace and 
truth. Might not all the religions of the world be 
more or less experiments of that kind ? It would not 
follow that there was no Providence presiding over 



1 1 6 THE METHOD OF RE VELA TION. 

the world's religious history. It would only follow 
that God had been for a season suffering all nations 
to walk in their own ways, while not leaving Himself 
without witness, but doing them good, giving them 
rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, the things they 
mainly sought after, filling their hearts with food and 
gladness. At the same time the apologist has no in- 
terest in dogmatically asserting that the preparation 
of the Gentiles for Christianity must be of this purely 
negative sort. It might, we should almost expect 
that it would, consist, not in mere fruitless experi- 
ments ending in despair, and in longings like those of 
Plato for light from above, but also in anticipations of 
truth, in ideas spiritually of kin to those of Hebrew 
psalmists and prophets and sages, scattered rays of 
light emanating from Him who is the Light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.* 

If the facts of the world's religious history at all 
correspond to these a priori inferences from the idea 
of revelation, it is evident that we have no reason to 
take a despairing view of the spiritual state of the 
pagan nations on account of their comparative igno- 
rance of the true God, and of His gracious will toward 
men. If so, then a fortiori we need have no anxiety 
as to the salvability of those belonging to the chosen 
race who lived at the early stage of revelation, because 
of a similar though not so dense ignorance. That the 
knowledge possessed by such in the primitive ages 
was very scanty, and the light very dim, we must ad- 
mit ; to assert the contrary, is simply to deny the his- 



* A view closely allied to this is worked out in a most interesting 
manner by Dr. Matheson, in his Baird Lectures on "The Natural 
Elements of Revealed Theology." 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 1 1 j 

torical character of revelation. The knowledge of 
God and of His will possessed by Abraham, for ex- 
ample, was to that of men living in the Christian era 
but as the germ to the full-grown organism, or as the 
acorn to the oak. He knew God as a gracious God, 
but He did not know what God in His grace was go- 
ing to do. Nor was such knowledge needful. It is 
the knowledge of God's spirit, not the knowledge of 
all that is in God's mind, that is saving. The older 
dogmatists were of a different opinion, and strove to 
make out for the earlier recipients of revelation a 
knowledge of God's plans and purposes little less com- 
plete than that possessed by those who live in the era 
of grace. This view is not only wide of the truth as 
a matter of fact, but opposed to the apologetic inter- 
est of the faith, as rendering it easy for unbelievers to 
raise formidable objections. Assuming that explicit 
acquaintance with the scheme of salvation is necessary 
to salvation, it virtually asserts that all the heathen 
are lost, and that members of the elect race were saved 
only by having vouchsafed to them a knowledge de- 
nied to all the rest of the world. The one assertion 
lays the position of believers open to such assaults as 
that of Rousseau, when he asked if it were credible 
that God would confine communications necessary to 
salvation to so few, and if a God who commences by 
choosing one people and proscribing the rest of the 
human race can be the common Father of men* The 
other assertion is open to the obvious objection that 
it does not seem in accordance with the facts as re- 
corded in Scripture. For, as Reimarus pointed out, 



* Vide " The Confession of the Savoyard Vicar," in Emile. 
6* 



1 1 8 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

the Divine communications to Abraham did not refer 
to such vital matters as the Atonement and the life 
to come, but to much more worldly matters, such as 
the birth of children and the possession of a particular 
country. The actual history of Abraham is indeed 
very hard to understand on any doctrinaire theory of 
revelation, whether it be the old orthodox one, or 
such a view as that of Mr. Arnold, which makes the 
didactic significance of the Bible consist in the reitera- 
ted proclamation of the immense importance of right- 
eousness. If belief in doctrines be so essential to sal- 
vation, it is hard to see why herds and flocks, sons 
and lands are so much more prominent than doctrines 
in Abraham's life. In like manner, it is hard to ex- 
plain the prominence of these secularities on the as- 
sumption made by Mr. Arnold, that " Probably the 
life of Abraham, the friend of God, however imper- 
fectly the Bible traditions by themselves convey it to 
us, was a decisive step forwards in the development 
of these ideas of righteousness."* The author of 
" Literature and Dogma" obviously feels that from 
his point of view the life of Abraham has been very 
unskilfully written. No wonder, for surely a writer 
sharing Mr. Arnold's views would have given much 
more prominence to Abraham's lessons in righteous- 
ness, and less to those material matters that occupy 
the foreground of the picture. No theory fits in to 
the facts as they are recorded, except that which 
makes revelation consist in the historical evolution of 
a gracious purpose, and which makes salvation depend, 
not on understanding what is to be the issue and out- 



* " Literature and Dogma," p. 31. 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 1 1 g 

come of the evolutionary process, but on the fact of 
the gracious purpose being in God's mind. Then we 
can understand the prominence given to such an ap- 
parent triviality as the birth of an heir, for that is a 
necessary first step in the process of development. 
Then also we can understand the scanty amount of 
doctrinal instruction communicated to Abraham, such 
not being indispensable to salvation. Then, once 
more, we know what to say to Rousseau when he com- 
plains of the proscription of the whole human race, 
Israel excepted. There was no proscription in the 
case ; election does not mean proscription, but is a 
method by which one is used to bless the many. And 
God does not need to wait till the method has been 
fully developed before He can do good to the many. 
If His grace can reach the members of the chosen 
race, though their knowledge of His purposes be small, 
it can also reach those without, though their know- 
ledge be still less. It may indeed be objected, that 
on this genial and hopeful view of the compatibility 
of salvation with much ignorance, knowledge seems 
wholly unnecessary, and the revelation of the mystery 
of grace altogether superfluous. But the objection is 
easily met. In the first place, no one can rationally 
pretend that the influence of God's gracious thoughts 
unknown can by any possibility be equal to the in- 
fluence of these thoughts known. But more especial- 
ly it is to be borne in mind that gracious thoughts 
never revealed are not gracious thoughts at all. It is 
essential to the being of grace or love that it manifest 
itself. Love unrevealed is love unreal. The time 
and the manner of revelation are matters of secondary 
importance, affairs of method to be determined by 



1 20 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

love taking counsel with wisdom ; but revelation on 
some method there must be, if there be indeed a gra- 
cious purpose hid in God's bosom. 

Defective knowledge of God's gracious intentions 
in the early period of revelation thus appears to be 
by no means an insuperable objection to the method 
adopted in making the revelation. The difficulties, 
however, arising out of the moral defectiveness 
characteristic of the same period, may appear more 
serious. These difficulties present themselves to our 
view more or less throughout the whole Old Testa- 
ment epoch, the age of preparation, and may be 
divided into four classes. There are those connected 
with the defective morality of the agents or recipients 
of revelation ; those arising out of actions represented 
as being sanctioned and commanded by God ; those 
connected with rudimentary legislation ; and finally, 
those presented in the traces of a legal spirit in the 
Old Testament literature, strongly contrasting with 
the evangelic spirit characteristic of the New Testa- 
ment. To attempt a discussion of all the topics 
coming under these several heads, would carry us far 
beyond our limits. I must therefore confine myself 
to a few selected points which may suffice to illus- 
trate the bearings of the question. 

Two general remarks may be premised, bearing on 
the whole subject. The first is, that it should not 
surprise us if, in the course of a Divine revelation, 
the morally perfect should be preceded by the 
morally imperfect. It is enough if the perfect do 
at length come, and if throughout there be a per- 
ceptible progress towards the perfect as the goal. If 
it should be found that such is the character of 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. j 2 1 

the alleged revelation recorded in the Scriptures, — 
a steady progress towards an ethical ideal eventually 
realised, — we should then have no hesitation on the 
score of defect in the early stages in recognising such 
a reputed revelation as indeed divine. Revelation 
in that case, on its ethical side, as a moral education 
of the human race, would be in analogy with the 
sanctification of the individual, which is not a mo- 
mentary magical act, but a gradual work which 
advances slowly from stage to stage till the ripe 
fruit of Christian maturity at length appear. The 
fact to be accentuated in connection with such a 
revelation is, not the defect of preparatory stages, but 
the upward progressive tendency of the movement. 
The marks of its divineness are the ideal reached at 
the end, and the constant advance towards the ideal. 
Neither of these belongs to the order of nature. Not 
the ideal ; for all admit that the character of Christ 
and the ethical standard set up in His teaching and 
example reach a preternatural pitch of perfection. 
Not the steady progress towards the ideal ; for such 
an advance is nowhere else exemplified, and least 
of all among the Semitic races to which the people 
of revelation belonged. The tendency of man, as 
revealed in the history of nations, has ever been 
towards moral degeneracy, both in theory and in 
conduct ; and this tendency, as is well known to 
students, was to an exceptional extent exemplified 
in the religious history of the pagan Semites. The 
facts in evideo£e can be gathered from the pages 
of the Hebrew Scriptures, as can also the proofs of 
an ever-increasing purity in the moral ideas within 
the pale of the chosen people ; and when the two 



1 2 2 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

classes of facts are placed side by side one cannot 
help asking the question, Whence this striking differ- 
ence ? The answer of faith is, that the difference is 
due, not to the natural genius of the Hebrew race, 
but to the supernatural action of God. Does it not 
seem a rational answer ? 

But can we introduce God as an agent in the 
moral education of Israel without compromising His 
perfection by making Him responsible for, or at 
least bringing Him into dishonouring contact with, 
the crude moralities of the earlier stages of the 
pedagogic process? The answer we give to this 
question will depend on the idea we form of Divine 
perfection ; and the second observation I wish to 
make is, that we ought not to regard God's per- 
fection from the Pharisaic view-point of mere ma- 
jesty or negative holiness, but from the Christian 
view-point of gracious condescension and love. This 
is a reflection much needing to be laid to heart, not 
only by unbelievers, but also by believers in revela- 
tion. For it is the fact that the idea of God en- 
tertained by many believers is largely tinged with 
Pharisaism. The Divine perfection, what is God- 
worthy, is judged of by reference, not to the idea 
of grace, but rather to that of exaltedness above 
the world. The habit of so judging reveals itself 
variously; by a priori inferences as to the literary 
characteristics of the Bible, viewed as a book pro- 
duced by Divine authorship, not less than by the 
manner in which the contents of the sacred volume 
are interpreted. God's book must be free from 
everything that would be regarded as a defect in a 
book of merely human authorship ; and if in any 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



123 



part of the book a sentiment appears which seems 
incompatible with God's holiness, it must be carefully 
explained away. Such zealous guardianship of God's 
literary and moral reputation is on a par with that 
exercised by Job's friends over God's character as 
the moral Governor, or by the censors of Jesus over 
His dignity when they blamed Him for associating 
with publicans and sinners. It is a service for which 
God does not thank them, because it is in His sight 
no service at all, but only a folly based on ignorance 
of His character and betraying His cause into the 
hands of its enemies. To all such self-elected 
guardians of His holiness and majesty God says : 
" Suffer Me to condescend to man's need. I am not 
the Being ye take Me for. My first concern is, not 
to uphold My dignity, but to communicate the bless- 
ings of My grace ; and for this purpose I am willing 
to stoop to whatever is necessary to bring Myself 
into living connection with those whom I would 
bless, so that they may indeed receive the benefit." 
Only a God of whose inmost heart such words were 
a true reflection would make a revelation of Himself 
to man; only when we so conceive of God can we 
understand, appreciate, and be benefited by the 
revelation which He has actually made. 

Passing now to speak of the different classes of 
moral difficulties, it: is easy to see the bearings of the 
preceding observations concerning the Divine per- 
fection on the supposed injury done thereto by con- 
tact with the moral crudity of the early recipients of 
revelation. The objections of Reimarus on this score 
were adverted to in the first Chapter ; and that such 
objections are not yet out of date appears from the 



124 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



style in which the same topic is treated in such a 
work as " The Bible for Young People." It is an 
offence to the authors of this book, that the wealth 
obtained by Jacob through cheating is called a bless- 
ing of God, and still more that the birthright is sup- 
posed to be conferred upon him by the Divine will, 
though it was obtained at first by a disgraceful ad- 
vantage taken of a thoughtless brother, and secured 
afterwards by a still more disgraceful fraud practised 
on an aged father. The occurrence of such gross 
representations in the story of the patriarch's life is 
accounted for somewhat as scholars are wont to 
account for the immoralities in Greek mythology, 
viz., by seeing in them traces of an early nature wor- 
ship. "A natoire god is not a morally good being. 
And so it was possible for a man to attribute base 
actions to his god and yet be religious; to be zealous 
for his honour, and ready to sacrifice himself to him 
if need were, and yet at the same time to be of a 
very low moral type."* The character of Jacob, as 
depicted in the narrative, is certainly bad enough, and 
it is not our part to extenuate its baseness. In one 
respect, indeed, our interest as apologists rather lies in 
the opposite direction, of making the patriarch's faults 
appear as glaring as possible. For the more glaring, 
the more like the ancient period they belong to, the 
less likely they are to be the mere invention of a 
prophetic narrator, living in an age when higher ideas 
of morality prevailed. The crude morality befits and 
bespeaks an early time, when the process of revela- 
tion was as yet only commencing. But the question 



Vol. i., p. 247. 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. j 2 5 

is, Could God have close relations with such a morally 
defective person as Jacob, such a relation as is im- 
plied in his being the elected heir of the blessing? 
Now, in justification of an affirmative answer to this 
question, we might insist on the fact that such men 
as Jacob, in spite of their defective character, are 
often the objects of Providential preference, succeed- 
ing in life when men of Esau-like spirit, generous, 
impulsive, thoughtless, fail. And we might further 
maintain that such preference was in accordance 
with the dictates of moral reason, inasmuch as Jacob, 
with all his grave faults, stood higher in the scale of 
being than Esau, tested by the principle that every 
man who exercises reflection and forethought, and 
regulates his life by an aim worthy of a human 
being, is superior to one who is the creature of im- 
pulse and appetite. Judged by this standard, it 
might be truly alleged that Jacob, though far less 
amiable, was more moral than Esau. We might say 
that, granting him to be a very mean man, still he 
was a man, while his brother was only a generous and 
likable animal. Then we might see in the election 
of Jacob, in preference to Esau, to the inheritance of 
blessing, simply the Divine endorsement of this com- 
parative estimate. And if we did adopt this view, 
we should not be guilty of nature worship ; that is to 
say, of believing in a god who is indifferent to moral 
distinctions ; for the view in question does not im- 
ply either Divine approbation of Jacob's faults or 
indifference to them, but simply a preference of him, 
as on the whole, all things considered, the better 
man — better absolutely, and better for the purpose 
of the election which was to separate a people from 



1 26 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

the rest of the world unto a high vocation. This 
purpose could best be served by those who were 
capable of appreciating the calling of God and the 
destiny of Israel, and it might safely be affirmed that 
a man like Jacob, however far below Abraham he 
might fall in respect to such capacity, was certainly 
much superior to a man of the Esau type. 

There is some force, I think, in the foregoing line 
of thought ; and yet I am not disposed to lay chief 
stress on it, but prefer rather to fall back on the cate- 
gory of grace, as that best fitted to help us through 
the difficulties of the patriarchal history. What we 
observe in the story of a Jacob, as in the case of any 
other morally defective Old Testament character, is 
just what we see in the Gospel records of Christ's 
ministry — the holy One in gracious love becoming 
the Friend of the sinful. In neither case was there 
indifference to moral evil, though in both such has 
been imputed by men of Pharisaic spirit. There 
was simply fearless contact with the morally culpable 
on the part of a gracious Being who had a higher 
end in view than merely to preserve His own holiness 
intact, even to make the sinful partaker of His holi- 
ness. That God had this end in view in His dealings 
with Jacob we ought not to doubt, any more than we 
doubt the motive of Jesus in going to be guest with 
men that were sinners. God meant to make Jacob 
better than He found him, and took him in hand to 
subject him to a moral discipline that should event- 
uate in a nature purified and ennobled. And the 
history seems to supply us with evidence that the 
disciplinary process reached its consummation, in 
that suggestive incident of the Patriarch wrestling 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



127 



with the angel, resulting in the change of his name 
from Jacob to Israel. A supplanter transformed into 
a Prince or Soldier of God, is a result worth taking 
pains for. Well might the God of grace have to do 
with one chargeable with grave vices of nature and 
faults in conduct, if the issue of His dealings was to 
be such a spiritual change! With such a possibility 
in view, we may even imagine the Divine Being 
selecting as the subject of His gracious influence one 
distinguished among his fellows, not for virtue, but 
for evil proclivities and habits. So Christ sought out 
the chief of sinners, hoping to find in them the most 
devoted disciples, basing His calculations on the 
principle : To whom much is forgiven, the same 
loveth much. 

Of all the cases belonging to the second class of 
difficulties, that, viz., of questionable actions sanc- 
tioned or commanded by God, none is more perplex- 
ing on the score of justice than the wholesale de- 
struction of the Canaanitish tribes. This instance of 
rude morality has, moreover, a further claim to our 
special attention on the ground of its peculiarly close 
connection with the question as to the chief end of 
revelation and the means adopted for its attainment. 
For it appears, on first view, as if in this case the end 
was sacrificed to the means, and the catholic purpose 
of grace compromised by the method of election. 
God, ex hypothesis has it in view to bless all the 
nations of the earth, and He chooses a particular 
people to be trained for being the vehicle of blessing; 
and here we see Him proposing to destroy a whole 
group of nations to make room for the chosen race. 
Could the God of grace give any countenance to so 



1 2 8 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

ruthless a. proceeding? Could a god who was capa- 
ble of such flagrant partiality cherish so humane and 
benevolent intentions as we have ascribed to the 
God of revelation? Is there not here some justifica- 
tion for the Gnostic doctrine, that the God of the 
Old Testament and the God proclaimed by Jesus 
Christ are entirely different beings, possessing moral 
attributes utterly incompatible ? That the people of 
Israel did wage a war of extermination against the 
Canaanites, one can easily believe, for it was the fash- 
ion of the time to conduct war in such a barbarous 
manner. That they found it possible to persuade 
themselves that God desired them to wage such a war, 
is also easy to understand; for, as Dr. Mozley has 
pointed out, the ruling ideas in those ancient ages 
concerning justice were such that men could regard 
as a divinely appointed duty what we now could not 
believe to be our duty, though miracles were wrought 
to persuade us it was. The sense of justice was then 
a blind passion, which made no distinction between 
the guilty and the innocent who were in any way 
connected with them ; therefore it would hardly 
require miracles to persuade the invaders of Pales- 
tine that, if the inhabitants of the land were de- 
serving of punishment for prevailing iniquity, they 
might be devoted to indiscriminate destruction. But 
the question is, How could the God of absolute 
justice, and still more the God of grace, be in any 
way a party to such a butchery ? The question is 
one to which it is not easy to return an answer com- 
pletely satisfactory; but before adverse judgment is 
pronounced, it is necessary to bear in mind all that 
Scripture says on the subject. The Scripture repre- 



THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 



129 



sentation is to the effect that while God had destined 
the descendants of Abraham to inherit the land of 
Canaan, yet He delayed the fulfilment of the promise 
for this reason, among others, that the old inhabitants 
might not be dispossessed or destroyed before their 
wickedness had reached such a pitch that their de- 
struction would be felt to be a just doom. According 
to the narrative in Genesis, intimation of this policy 
was made to Abraham himself, the Lord informing 
the Patriarch that his descendants should not gain 
possession of Canaan till four hundred years had 
elapsed, because the iniquity of the Amorite was not 
yet full. This intimation revealed the same solici- 
tude to appear the righteous Ruler which afterwards 
manifested itself in connection with the destruction 
of Sodom. The Lord said, " Because the cry of 
Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their 
sin is very grievous ; I will go down now, and see 
whether they have done altogether according to the 
cry of it, which is come unto Me ; and if not, I will 
know " ; and He was willing to spare Sodom if so 
much as ten good men were found in it. And the 
treatment of the two messengers in Sodom on the 
eve of the overthow, which was such that it were a 
shame even to speak of it, is carefully recorded, as if 
for the express purpose of preparing all readers for 
sympathizing with the deed of vengeance. And that 
story in the 19th chapter of Genesis explains what 
is meant by the iniquity of the Amorite. When the 
whole people of Canaan had become as Sodom in 
her fulness of bread, pride, and abundance of idleness, 
given up to infamous and unmentionable licentious- 
ness, at the period of the overthrow, then her iniquity 



130 



THE METHOD OF RE VELA TION. 



would be full, and then it might well appear an act 
of charity to humanity at large to spue her out of the 
land, and to give the country to a people that would 
make a better use of it. Such is the account given 
of the Divine procedure in the Book of Leviticus : 
" Defile not yourselves in any of these things (un- 
natural vices previously mentioned), for in all these 
the nations are defiled which I cast out before you : 
and the land is defiled : therefore I do visit the in- 
iquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth 
out her inhabitants." Here is no partiality of a 
merely national God befriending His worshippers at 
the expense of others, without regard to justice ; here, 
rather, is a Power making for righteousness and 
against iniquity ; yea, a Power acting with a benefi- 
cent regard to the good of humanity, burying a 
putrefying carcase out of sight lest it should taint 
the air. Here is the Proprietor of the whole earth 
taking a particular section of it out of the hands of 
cumberers of the ground and giving it to those who 
will occupy it to the general advantage ; yet acting 
patiently, giving to the perverse space for repentance, 
as if loath to come to extremities. Such is the God 
shown to view in this stern chapter in Israel's history; 
and it is the same picture in deed as that exhibited 
in words in the familiar text : " The Lord, the Lord 
God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abun- 
dant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for 
thousands (of generations), forgiving iniquity, trans- 
gression, and sin, and that will by no means clear ; 
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, 
and upon the children's children, unto the third and 
fourth generation." It is the same God who at along 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 



131 



subsequent time shrunk from destroying Nineveh, 
because in it were six score thousand persons that 
could not discern between their right hand and their 
left hand, and also much cattle, while knowing full 
well that when Nineveh's hour of doom came, young 
and old, man and beast would be involved in indis- 
criminate destruction ; and, just because He knew 
this, shrinking long from the dread work of venge- 
ance, dallying and procrastinating, and letting things 
go fearful lengths before coming to extremities. Such 
is the God of the Hebrew Scriptures throughout ; 
slow to wrath, yet ultimately punishing wickedness 
inexorably, visiting the iniquities which have been 
accumulating for generations on the head of that 
generation in which sin reaches its climax; taking 
far more pleasure in blessing than in cursing, visiting 
the goodness of fathers upon children even to the 
thousandth generation, while visiting the sin of 
fathers upon children only to the fourth ; so far from 
being chargeable with too great proneness or haste 
to punish evil-doers, that He rather often provokes 
in the good (as in the case of Jonah) wonder and dis- 
appointment by not calling them to account more 
promptly ; yet in the end executing judgment with 
terrible swiftness on those who have abused His 
goodness. Such is the God even of the New Testa- 
ment, Christ and the apostles being witnesses ; a 
God most kind and good, yet capable of awful wrath 
at last. Such a God Jehovah proved Himself to be 
to Israel herself, not less than to Sodom and the 
Canaanites. Such a God, once more, is the Power, 
not ourselves, revealed in the course of all human 
history. That Power puts out of the way with little 



1 32 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

compunction degenerate and effete nations, to make 
room for fresh vigorous races with stuff in them sup- 
plying material for an energetic fruitful development, 
executing its notice to quit in a very rough manner. 
This fact might seem to offer a sufficient apology for 
the Divine action in connection with the uprooting 
of the Canaanites. But Strauss insists on making a 
distinction between the ordinary course of history and 
God's supernatural action. The moral order of the 
world has its own peculiar characteristics, and what 
we have to do is not to criticise these, but to accept 
them as hard facts and adapt ourselves to them. 
" But when God interposes supernaturally, as all 
methods of working are equally accessible to Him, 
He must act in the way that is morally least objec- 
tionable ; therefore in the present case, having it in 
view to settle the Israelites in Canaan, rather than*set 
on foot a war of extermination, fitted to de-humanize 
the chosen people and to shock mankind, He ought 
rather to have put into the mind of the original 
inhabitants the impulse to emigrate to some unin- 
habited part of the world, even if it were necessary to 
create such an impulse."* That is to say, God ought 
to have revealed to the Canaanites the existence, say, 
of America, and put it into their hearts to set sail 
en masse for its shores. The scheme is very humane, 
and it might, if carried out, have had an important 
influence on the destinies of the new world; but it is 
liable to two considerable objections. The mode of 
action would have been violently, magically, miracu- 
lous, unnatural as well as supernatural. Then, while 



* "Hermann Samuel Reimarus," p. 116. 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 1 3 3 

gratifying humane feeling, it would have involved a 
total oversight of the interests of holiness, which, 
even for the ultimate happiness of the world, were 
the supreme interests in the case. For nothing was 
better fitted to qualify Israel for being the vehicle of 
moral blessing to mankind than some terrible proofs 
at the beginning of her history of the Divine abhor- 
rence of human depravity. And this remark reminds 
me of another consideration having an important 
bearing on the present topic. It is, that according 
to the Biblical representation the people of Israel 
were under the discipline of law at the time they 
gained possession of the promised land. This fact 
exercised a controlling influence on the manner of 
the acquisition, requiring it to be such as would 
serve the end of the lawgiving, the development of 
the sense of sin, and especially of a deep abhorrence 
of the two chief sins of the Canaanites, idolatry and 
sensuality. The same fact also involved a certain 
obscuration of the manifested character of God, 
obliging Him, as it were, to descend from the eleva- 
tion of a gracious Benefactor to the lower platform 
of a moral Governor, dealing with Israel and sur- 
rounding peoples in accordance with the rough prin- 
ciples of justice revealed in the moral order of the 
world, which is just in tendency, and on the great 
scale, but to appearance unjust and indiscriminate in 
detail and in manifold individual instances. 

It thus appears that the law, even in its ethical 
kernel, the Decalogue, involved for God, as the King 
of Israel, a certain eclipsing of His gracious charac- 
ter. Still more was this the case with those parts of 
the Mosaic law which were in themselves rude and 
7 



1 34 THE ME THOD OE RE VELA TION. 

defective, such as the laws relative to marriage, 
divorce, retaliation, etc., and also those regulating 
religious ritual. I have already, in an earlier part of 
this chapter, indicated certain lines of thought fitted 
to show that the entrance of a legal phase into the, 
process of revelation was necessary, and that the ap- 
pearance of such a phase does not disannul the gra- 
cious character of revelation as a whole. What I 
wish now to point out is, that the rudimentary legis- 
lation, which was our third source of difficulty, while 
certainly concealing, did also after a fashion reveal 
Divine grace. In giving such laws, God was graciously 
accommodating Himself to the capacities of the 
people whose moral education He had taken in hand. 
The very rudeness of the legislation was a proof of 
Divine condescension. This important truth cannot 
be better put than it is in the Scriptures, especially 
by the prophet Hosea, by our Lord, and by the 
apostle Paul. The prophet, in God's name, says : 
" When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and 

called my son out of Egypt I taught Ephraim 

also to go, taking them by their arms."* This is an 
oracle worthy of the prophet of Divine love, and sets 
God's action towards Israel in the early period of her 
history in a most gracious light. In the events con- 
nected with the Exodus, God as it were adopted an 
enslaved race as His son. This son it became neces- 
sary to train so that he should be worthy of his 
Father ; and as the child was found in a very rude 
condition, the training could not be other than very 
elementary. God had to teach Israel to walk in the 



osea xi. i, 3. 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. \ 3 5 

paths of righteousness like a nurse taking a child by 
the arms, and had to exercise a nurse-like condescen- 
sion and patience in connection with the self-imposed 
task of Israel's moral education, and to become as a 
child Himself, speaking in broken language and giv- 
ing laws of a very rude and primitive character 
adapted to the condition of the pupil. Paul conveys 
much the same idea when he describes the legal ordi- 
nances, with special reference to the Levitical ritual, 
as weak and poverty-stricken rudiments.* The word 
aroix^ia signifies literally the letters of the alphabet 
arranged in a row ; and the idea suggested is, that the 
Jewish religion was fit only for the childhood of hu- 
manity, when men were, as it were, learning their 
letters. The figure happily conveys the truth that 
the rudimentary legislation and ritual of the old 
economy were in their time and place necessary and 
useful, and yet were destined to be outgrown and 
superseded. If, as some think, the apostle meant the 
figure to apply likewise to the religions of the Gen- 
tiles, then it conveys a similar truth with regard to 
them also. In any case the words present a very 
genial view of the Divine character as the moral and 
religious Educator of men. God appears condescend- 
ing to begin at the beginning, and graciously stoop- 
ing to teach the merest alphabet of morals and 
religion, in the hope of leading His pupils on gradu- 
ally to higher things. 

In both the foregoing representations the need for 
rudimentary training is shown, without imputing any 
blame to the subject of discipline. The pupil is 



* Gal. iv. 9. 



1 36 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

simply a child, and therefore must have such instruc- 
tion as a child can receive. 

In the teaching of our Lord, on the other hand, 
the rationale of the moral defectiveness of the Mosaic 
legislation is found in the morally rude condition of 
the subject, which He described by the expressive 
phrase hardness of heart {<jK\rfpoKapdia). To the 
sklerokardia He ascribed the presence in the Mosaic 
statute book of a too indulgent law of divorce ;* and 
to the same source He doubtless traced all other im- 
perfect elements in the civil code of Israel, such as 
the barbarous law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, 
and a tooth for a tooth. This amounted to saying 
that God gave Israel statutes that were not good, 
because Israel herself was not good. It is a very 
bold thought, and yet it is a thought which had been 
uttered long before almost in these terms by the 
prophet Ezekiel.f And bold as it appears, almost 
to the extent of being injurious to the Divine holi- 
ness, this representation, in reality, brings the grace 
of God in the training of Israel more prominently 
into view than even the genial analogies employed 
by Hosea and Paul. For there is greater grace in 
condescending to moral perversity with a view to 
gradual improvement in character, than in conde- 
scending to childish ignorance and imbecility with a 
view to the gradual enlightenment and strengthening 
of the reason. Christ did not shrink from ascribing 
this greater grace to God ; and the secret of His 
boldness is to be found in His own loving spirit, 
which shunned not contact with the sinful to such an 



* Matt. xix. 8. f Ezek. xx. 25. 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. \ 3 7 

extent as to give rise to serious misunderstanding, 
and earn for Him the honourable nickname of the 
Sinners' Friend. He understood the conduct of the 
Hebrew legislator through His own, and by aid 
thereof was able to discern grace beneath all the 
crudities of the Mosaic statute — grace forbearing 
with moral rudeness meanwhile, and steadily keeping 
in view a time when the sklerokardia should be re- 
moved, and regenerated men would be able to adopt 
as the law of life the ideal standard of duty. 

It is evident that men could not be under a legal 
system capable of being characterized as it is by 
prophets, apostles, and our Lord, without having 
their whole way of thinking and feeling about God, 
man, and the world very seriously affected thereby. 
The law involved a temporary obscuration of the 
promise ; and it was to be expected that while the 
obscuration lasted it should lead those who lived 
under it to cherish ideas concerning God and human 
life, duty, and destiny bearing a stamp of imper- 
fection and demanding rectification by the light 
which came with the dawn of the Gospel era. This 
is only to say that the child's thoughts were like the 
discipline he lived under. It may be worth while to 
note in the close of this chapter, some of the chief 
traces of the gloom of the night to be found in the 
literature of the Old Covenant. The topic may be- 
long more strictly to the Apologetic of the Script- 
ures than to the Apologetic of Revelation ; but as 
the phenomena in question are among the most in- 
teresting and impressive evidences of the imperfec- 
tion inseparable from the early stages of a progres- 
sive revelation, a brief reference to them cannot be 



1 3 8 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 

considered irrelevant. In connection with the Apol- 
ogetic of Scripture, the use of the study is to show- 
that the phenomena are such as were to be expected 
from the method of revelation. In connection with 
the Apologetic of Revelation, its use is to show that 
the method of revelation was such as has been re- 
presented, a method involving growth and progress, 
and therefore imperfection in the earlier stages. 

Among the phenomena which indicate the effect 
on men's minds of the legal discipline, may be men- 
tioned the comparative absence of the filial spirit 
from the sacred literature of the Old Covenant, as 
contrasted with the New Testament. I say com- 
parative, for I do not at all agree with those who, in 
ancient or modern times, have asserted that the filial 
spirit which regards God as a Father is entirely ab- 
sent from the Old Testament. It is well known what 
extreme views were held by Marcion on this point ; 
and similar opinions have been expressed in our own 
day by men occupying a very different theological 
position from that of the Gnostic heretic. In his 
able work on the Fatherhood of God, the late Dr. 
Candlish says : " There is little or, I think I may al- 
most say, nothing of the filial element in the re- 
corded spiritual experiences and spiritual exercises 
of Old Testament believers. The Psalms entirely 
want it. The nearest approach to it, perhaps, is that 
most tenderly suggested analogy, ' Like as a father 
pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that 
fear Him. ' "* Surely this is an exaggeration. The 
word " Father'' does not very often occur in the Old 



* Lecture III. 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. \ 39 

Testament ; but the filial spirit of trust in God as a 
gracious Being, of which the appropriate expression 
is the name Father, is certainly not so entirely want- 
ing as is alleged. The child, though under tutors 
and governors, is not so utterly dominated by a legal 
spirit, as not to know whose child it is. There is not 
one of the Old Testament writers who does not know 
that God deals not with men in the strict rigour of 
justice, but is merciful and gracious, and that only on 
that ground can any one hope to stand before Him. 
But while this is true, it is not less true that there 
is a certain obscuration of the filial consciousness 
discernible in the utterances of Old Testament saints, 
which is due to two closely connected causes; viz., 
the influence of the legal covenant, and the habit of 
judging God's purposes by the course of outward 
events. The law and the theocratic conception of 
God connected therewith fostered in the minds of 
Israelites a habit of regarding God as a dealer out 
of rewards and punishments proportioned to men's 
acts. Hence, when outward events were untoward, 
there came a cloud between God's face and the soul 
of the devout man, and an inner conflict arose be- 
tween two classes of thoughts, one suggested by 
theory on the one hand, and one suggested by a good 
conscience on the other; theory telling him that in 
unhappy circumstances he ought to regard himself 
as the object of Divine displeasure for his sins, a 
good conscience telling him that there was nothing 
in his conduct that could account for the frown of 
Providence. We see this conflict vividly represented 
at large in the Book of Job, and shortly in the forty- 
fourth Psalm. 



140 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. 



Closely connected with the unfilial tone of Old 
Testament piety is the querulousness characteristic 
thereof in view of the dark mysteries of human ex- 
perience. The spirit of sonship is cheerful, buoyant, 
optimistic ; the legal spirit, on the contrary, is gloomy 
and desponding. Clouds of sadness and depression 
accordingly frequently darken the Old Testament sky. 
Psalmists doubt whether God be good to the right- 
eous, seeing how bad men prosper, and good men are 
plagued all the day long. Prophets demand why 
they that deal treacherously are happy, and marvel 
that One believed to be too holy to regard evil with 
complacency, or even with indifference, should look 
on unmoved when the wicked devoureth the man 
who is more righteous than he, and suffer the inno- 
cent to be caught like fishes in the sea in the net of 
an Eastern despot bent on universal conquest.* This 
querulousness was one of the results of the legal dis- 
cipline, which put the people of Israel on this foot- 
ing : " Do right, and it shall be well with thee ; do 
wrong, and it shall go ill with thee." It was a truth, 
but it was only a partial truth. It does go well on 
the whole with nations that keep God's command- 
ments, but not uniformly or to the full extent of 
human wishes. It is an affair of tendency, and there 
are many exceptions, qualifications, and drawbacks ; 
and over and above this the legal covenant does not 
exhaust the relations between God and man. These 
things, however, Israelites did not understand. They 
took the covenant as strict truth and as the whole 
truth, and they were therefore very much astonished 



* Habakkuk i. 13. 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. j 4 x 

to find that experience did not correspond to promise ; 
and their feelings were embittered, and their ideas 
confounded, and a painful perilous spirit of doubt 
regarding the righteousness and the reality of Divine 
Providence visited their minds. 

A third element in which we can trace the in- 
fluence of the legal discipline in the Old Testament 
is what may be called the worldliness of its life 
theory. Felicity is placed largely in outward good. 
The method of reaching happiness is mainly outward, 
as that of the New Testament is mainly inward. 
Broadly stated, this contrast holds good ; though 
here, as in regard to the absence of the filial spirit, 
we must beware of extreme statements. The con- 
ception of a felicity not dependent on external state, 
but consisting in inward peace of mind springing out 
of a faith in God not to be shaken by any untoward 
events, is not foreign to the Hebrew writings. No- 
where in the whole Bible does it find more beautiful 
and pathetic expression than in some utterances of 
Psalmists and Prophets. The closing portion of the 
seventy-third Psalm, and the concluding stanzas of 
Habakkuk's sublime prayer, beginning respectively 
with the words, " Nevertheless I am continually with 
Thee," and " Although the fig-tree shall not blossom," 
may be cited as examples. But the Psalmist and the 
Prophet who indited these charming lyrics did not 
reach the imperturbable serenity to which they give 
so graceful expression without a struggle. The man 
who at last finds in God in all circumstances a source 
of strength and a satisfying portion, had doubted 
whether God were good to Israel ; and his doubt was 
due to his placing happiness in things without, iri- 
7* 



1 42 THE ME THOD OF RE VELA T10N. 

stead of in God alone as the Summum Bonum. And 
the hind-footed prophet who has at length acquired 
the power of bounding securely from rock to rock 
like a chamois on the Swiss mountains, is a man who 
had found it hard to reconcile the holiness of God 
with the seeming heartlessness of His attitude to- 
wards human affairs ; and the origin of his perplexity- 
was the same as in the case of the Psalmist. These 
men of God had both looked for happiness without 
first, and only after being disappointed in that direc- 
tion did they have recourse to the " method of in- 
wardness." And the method of outwardness was that 
which came natural to Israel, as we can see from 
many a Psalm and from the Proverbs of Solomon.- 
And this habit of thought was fostered by the law 
which promised material, temporal felicity as the re- 
ward of obedience to the commandments ; long life 
to children who reverenced their parents ; full basket 
to the man that feared the Lord ; national prosperity 
so long as Israel was faithful to the covenant. 
" Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, wealth 
and riches shall be in his house." " Blessed is every 
one that feareth the Lord ; thy wife shall be as a 
fruitful vine by the sides of thine house ; thy children 
like olive plants round about thy table. Thou shalt 
see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. 
Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace 
upon Israel." Such are samples of the law-bred 
worldliness, or, to use a less invidious expression, 
" this-world-ness " of the Hebrew, in which the child 
under tutors and governors appears as yet unable to 
comprehend the nature of his inheritance, and look- 
ing upon the things which are seen and temporal, 



THE ME THOD OF RE VELA TION. i^ 

not on the things which are unseen and eternal ; in- 
somuch that the hope of future glory after the tribu- 
lations of life are past, which made affliction seem 
light to Paul, scarce occurred to his thoughts, and 
had it been suggested as a source of consolation, 
would probably only have made him melancholy. 

Yet another trace of legal influence discernible 
in the Old Testament may be mentioned, viz., what 
we may without offence call the vindictive spirit. 
That this is a characteristic of the Hebrew Scriptures 
as compared with the teaching of Christ and the 
Apostles, was recognised even by Tertullian, the great 
opponent of Marcion. In his treatise " De Patientia, TV 
he speaks of that virtue as an addition to and supple- 
ment of the law, and as the only thing that had been 
wanting to the doctrine of justice. " For surely they 
demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, 
for not yet was patience on earth, because faith was 
not ; meanwhile, impatience was taking advantage of 
the licence of the law, which was easy to be done in 
the absence of the Lord of patience."* The great 
Puritan theologian, Dr. Owen, expresses a similar 
opinion in his treatise on the 130th Psalm. "This 
duty of forgiveness is more directly and expressly 
recognised in the New Testament than in the Old. 
. . . . Hence we find a different frame of spirit 
between them under that dispensation and those 
under that of the New Testament. There are found 
among them such reflections on their enemies, their 
oppressors, their persecutors, and the like, as, although 
they were warranted by some actings of the Spirit 



" De Patientia," cap. vL 



144 THE METHOD OF REVELATION. 

of God in them, yet being suited to the dispensation 
they were under, do no way become us, who by Jesus 

Christ do receive grace for grace For all our 

obedience, both in matter and manner, is to be suited 
to the discoveries and revelation of God to us." 
The fact and its explanation are as represented by 
these distinguished doctors of theology. The spirit 
of forgiveness had not the same full possession of 
the hearts of Old Testament worthies which it 
attained in those who yielded themselves up to the 
teaching and spirit of Christ ; and the cause was the 
habit fostered under the legal economy of regulating 
the life too exclusively by the law of retaliation, an 
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, which in 
principle is a good law for the State, but not the 
highest law for the individual. The judge, if called 
on, is bound to give redress for wrong, but I am not 
bound to ask redress. I am free, in many cases, if 
I will, to suffer wrong; and if I be filled with the 
Spirit of Christ, 1 will often do so, and seek to over- 
come evil wMi good. 

Such are some oi the more salient characteristics 
of the literature of the ancient covenant traceable to 
the influence of the Mosaic legislation. It is well to 
understand how such phenomena are to be dealt with.' 
On the one hand, they are to be frankly acknow- 
ledged ; on the other, they ought not to be looked on 
as stumbling-blocks to faith, as if they were fitted to 
bring into doubt the reality of the revelation of grace, 
or the claims of writings in which such blots appear, 
to enter as constituent parts of the record of such a 
revelation. For if we recognise the compatibility of 
the legal dispensation as a whole with a revelation of 



THE METHOD OF RE VELA TION. 145 

grace, as a stage in the course of its development, 
such recognition covers all details which can be shown 
to be the natural effects of the dispensation. It is 
inconsistent to say it was right that the law should 
come, that by its discipline it might prepare the heir 
for the promise, and at the same time to be scandal- 
ized when you find the child's thoughts taking their 
co'mplexion from the system under which he lived ; 
especially when it is considered that the direct aim of 
the system was, not to teach him to think imperfectly, 
but rather to prepare him for the era of perfection 
that was coming. The law was not given to make 
men cherish dark views of God, worldly views of life, 
and vindictive feelings towards those who had done 
them wrong. It was given to educate conscience in 
the sense of righteousness, and for that end it repre- 
sented God as a Holy Sovereign rather than a Be- 
nignant Father, insisted on the connection between 
conduct and happiness in this life, and in all depart- 
ments of life, and gave prominence to the duties men 
owe to each other, and were entitled to demand from 
each other. The defects in religious feeling, in the 
motives to good conduct, and in temper, which charac- 
terized the men who lived under the legal system, were 
accompanying incidents of the system, not ends which 
it proposed to itself. You cannot come to Mount 
Sinai without feeling more or less the solemn gloom 
and terror its environment inspires ; nevertheless the 
people of Israel were not gathered to the Mount of 
Lawgiving to have their hearts filled with such emo- 
tions, but to get introduced into their life-blood the 
steel-drops of moral law, without which neither in- 
dividuals nor nations come to much in this world. 






THE FUNCTION OF MIRACLE IN 
REVELATION. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FUNCTION OF MIRACLE IN REVELATION. 

The chief end of miracle and prophecy, according 
to the traditional view handed down to us from the 
older school of apologists, is to supply proofs or cre- 
dentials of revelation. This view is the natural ac- 
companiment of a doctrinaire conception of revelation. 
Revelation, according to that conception, is the com- 
munication of a body of truths which reason could 
not have discovered, and to a large extent cannot 
even verify* Such a revelation stands in need of 
some evidence outside the system of doctrines claim- 
ing to be revealed, fitted to justify belief in the valid- 
ity of the claim, and the consequent reception of the 
doctrines as given supernaturally from heaven. This 
need, it was to be expected, the divine Revealer 
would recognise and provide for. But what more 
satisfactory provision could be made than that sup- 
plied in biblical miracles, supernatural acts of Divine 
power, and in the predictive prophecies, supernatural 
manifestations of foreknowledge ? These miracles 
and prophecies, therefore, are to be regarded as signs 
annexed to revelation to assure us that God is indeed 
speaking to us. This mode of viewing miracle and 
prophecy still holds its ground in some influential 



1 5 o THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

quarters. The excellent Lectures on Miracles by the 
late Dr. Mozley, forming the Bampton series for 1865, 
may be cited as a conspicuous instance of the advo- 
cacy of this view at a comparatively recent date. Dr. 
Mozley's mode of contemplating the subject is very 
clearly indicated in the following sentences from his 
first lecture. " There is one great purpose which 
divines assign to miracles, viz., the proof of a revela- 
tion. And certainly, if it was the will of God to give 
a revelation, there are plain and obvious reasons for 
asserting that miracles are necessary as the guarantee 
and voucher for that revelation. A revelation is, 
properly speaking, such only by virtue of telling us 
something which we could not know without it. But 
how do we know that that communication of what is 
undiscoverable by human reason is true ? Our reason 
cannot prove the truth of it ; for it is by the supposi- 
tion beyond our reason. There must be, then, some 
note or sign to certify to it and distinguish it, as a 
true communication from God, which note can be 
nothing else than a miracle." The author of " Super- 
natural Religion " adopts the same view both of reve- 
lation and of miracle, and falls back on Dr. Mozley 
as an authority in justification of his doing so. Chris- 
tianity, the Bampton Lecturer being witness, consists 
of a system of inscrutable mysteries, undiscoverable 
by reason and incomprehensible to reason, which 
therefore have no self-evidencing power, but can be 
accredited only by miraculous deeds wrought by the 
agents of revelation.* The anonymous author re- 
ferred to was very glad, doubtless, to have so respect- 



* Vide first and following pages of the work referred to. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. \ 5 1 

able authority for such a representation of revealed 
religion. It made his task as a destroyer compara- 
tively easy. He had but to make such a vigorous 
onslaught on miracles as would suffice at least to fill 
the minds of readers with grave doubts and perplexi- 
ties respecting the possibility and the verifiableness of 
the supernatural in general, in order to gain the end 
of unsettling conviction and detaching minds from 
the faith. For revelation, so conceived, has nothing 
in itself to commend it to men's acceptance ; it is ut- 
terly devoid of self-evidencing power ; its only prop 
is miracle, and that being knocked from under it, or 
rudely shaken, the whole superstructure tumbles to 
the ground. Yea, on such a view of revelation, the 
philosophical argument against miracle is likely to be 
reinforced by a practical argument to this effect : 
What is the worth of a religious system which con- 
sists of mere undiscoverable and unintelligible myste- 
ries, which have nothing in themselves tending to 
produce faith, no inherent persuasive power? Is such 
a system worth the trouble taken to accredit it as a 
Divine revelation ? Is it to be believed that God did 
take such trouble as is implied in the series of mira- 
cles wrought by Him directly or indirectly for that 
end ? I do not suppose the author of " Supernatural 
Religion " meant to represent Christianity in a disad- 
vantageous light in order to serve the purpose of con- 
troversial tactics. The probability is, that he did not 
know any better way of viewing the subject ; and his 
ignorance is excusable when it is considered in what 
company he errs. But the fact is, that no mode of 
conceiving of Christianity so effectually plays into the 
hands of unbelief as the one in question ; and the use 



152 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 



made of it in good faith by this formidable opponent 
shows how important it is that apologists should take 
care not to state the question in such a way as gives 
advantage to antagonists, as I think the eminent de- 
fender of miracles has done in the passage above 
quoted. In the interest of faith, it is urgently incum- 
bent on the apologist to make the relation between 
revelation and miracle appear more intimate and vital. 
The traditional view of the relation as purely exter- 
nal, creates an injurious prejudice against revelation, 
by fostering an exaggerated idea of its need of attes- 
tation. The prejudice is as unfounded as it is injuri- 
ous. For, to see how different this hard outward 
view of Christianity, as a system of mysterious doc- 
trines forced on our acceptance by miracles, is from 
that presented in the Bible, it is enough to recall to 
our thoughts the familiar utterance of the Apostle 
Paul : " This is a credible saying, and worthy of all 
acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to 
save sinners."* Paul regarded this truth, which is 
the essence of the Gospel, as one intrinsically credi- 
ble, and in itself so welcome to the sin-burdened 
heart, that one is not disposed to demand, or sensible 
of any great need for, an imposing array of miracles 
to compel belief in it, as if it were a thing which, 
without miracles, would be obstinately disbelieved, 
or regarded at least with sceptical incredulity. That 
mighty miracles were wrought by Him who came 
into the world, he of course believed ; but he did not 
look on these as indispensable credentials, without 
which he should have regarded the fact of Christ 



i Timothy i. 15. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 



153 



coming on a redemptive errand as neither credible 
nor acceptable. That fact, on the contrary, while not 
a truth discoverable by reason a priori, appeared to 
him one which, once revealed, was fitted to commend 
itself alike to reason, conscience, and heart ; for what 
more worthy of God than such compassion towards 
sinful, erring men ? what more welcome to the bur- 
dened conscience than deliverance from the sense of 
guilt and the dominion of sin ? what more acceptable 
to the heart than a sinners' friend like Jesus, who 
could love even unto death, and so earn as His guer- 
don the enthusiastic devotion of those He came to 
save? 

Our quarrel with the traditional view of the func- 
tion of miracle is, not that it is wholly false, but that 
it is altogether inadequate, and gives the first place 
to that which is secondary and subordinate, and so 
leads ultimately to a wrong conception of the very 
nature of miracle. Dr. Mozley cites sayings of Christ 
in proof that He admitted the inadequacy of His 
own mere word, and the necessity of a rational guaran- 
tee to His revelation of His own nature and commis- 
sion. The texts do certainly show that our Lord 
referred to His own miraculous deeds as available 
evidence in support of His claim to be one sent from 
God. But they do not show that He looked on these, 
viewed simply as miracles, as the main evidence of His 
claims. As matter of fact He did not so regard them ; 
how far He was from doing this, may be learnt from 
His uniform answer to such as asked Him for a sign 
that might set their doubts at rest, which was a re- 
fusal. Such refusals might in some cases be account- 
ed for by the fact that the sign-seekers were not 



154 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 



asking in good faith, but were merely seeking an ex- 
cuse for unbelief. But in other cases, as, e.g., in that 
of the multitude at Capernaum, who asked, " What 
dost Thou for a sign, that we may see and believe 
Thee? what dost Thou work?"* this explanation 
cannot be resorted to, for these sign-seekers were ad- 
mirers, and in their way, for the moment, disciples of 
Jesus. The reason of the refusal is to be found in 
this, that the seekers of a sign wanted to see some 
prodigy that stood in no intrinsic relation to Christ's 
work as Saviour, but was a mere arbitrary wonder 
wrought for the express purpose of accrediting the 
worker, and serving no other purpose. The theory 
of the sign-seekers seems to have been, that the less 
moral significance a miracle possessed, the less useful 
it was, the better fitted was it to serve the purpose of 
evidence. To turn stones into bread, and then im- 
mediately to reconvert them into stones, had been to 
them a better proof of Christ's claims to men's faith 
and discipleship than the thing He had just done, 
the feeding of thousands of hungry persons in the 
wilderness. Such prodigies Jesus never wrought, 
ever sternly refused to work; and His refusal is a 
condemnation of the purely evidential view of the 
function of miracles. For on that view it is in the 
miraculousness of miracles that their value as evidence 
lies; and this is one of the gravest objections against 
the traditional theory, that it leads to a distorted and 
caricaturing conception both of miracle and prophecy 
For evidential purposes, it is the thaumaturgical ele- 
ment in miracle and the predictive element in pro- 



John vi. 30. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. i 5 5 

phecy that is of chief value. Hence we find Mr. 
Arnold, in the chapter of " Literature and Dogma" 
which relates to the argujnent from miracles, select- 
ing, as an imaginary typical miracle, the conversion 
of a pen into a pen-wiper. With this typical miracle 
he finds it very easy, as we shall see, to put the fool's 
cap on the old English method of using miracles as 
external signs wrought with a view to accredit a doc- 
trinal revelation — a method, unfortunately, not yet 
fallen into disuetude, the English mind being very 
conservative and prone to keep in the beaten path. 
Perhaps Mr. Arnold's chapter on Miracles will very 
materially help conservative minds to arrive at the 
conclusion that a way of conceiving the nature and 
the function of miracle which cannot be typified by 
the thaumaturgic feat of converting a pen into a pen- 
wiper, is on all grounds much to be desired. 

There is such a way, and it is one naturally arising 
out of the view of revelation advocated in this work. 
Revelation consisting in the self-manifestation of God 
in human history as the God of a gracious purpose, 
— the manifestation being made not merely or chiefly 
by words, but very specially by deeds, — the thought 
readily suggests itself that the true way of conceiv- 
ing miracles, and also prophecy, is to regard them, 
not as mere signs annexed to revelation for evidential 
purposes, but as constitutive elements of revelation, 
as forming in fact the very essence of the revelation. 
Let us revert, in illustration of this statement, to the 
miracles of our Lord. Christ's miraculous deeds were 
all useful, morally significant, beneficent works, rising 
naturally out of His vocation as Saviour, performed 
in the course of His ministry in the pursuit of His 



1 5 6 THE F UNC TION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

high calling, and just as naturally lying in His way, 
as unmiraculous healings lie in the way of any ordi- 
nary physician. In a word, Christ's miracles were 
simply a part of His ministry, and He appealed to 
them in evidence, not as something external added 
to His work as a seal, — the nature of the miracles 
being of no consequence, provided only they were 
miracles,— but as an integral portion of the work, the 
evidence of which was really as internal as that of 
His teaching, which by its intrinsic wisdom and grace 
came home to men's minds with persuasive force and 
moral authority. In perfect accord with this view is 
the place assigned to miracles by Jesus Himself, in 
His reply to the Baptist's messengers: "The. blind 
receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are 
cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, 
and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them."* 
Miracles of healing are put on a level with preaching 
the good tidings to those who most needed them, 
and their evidence is of the same kind. For the reply 
does not mean : Tell John that I evangelize the poor, 
and that I also work miscellaneous miracles as super- 
natural evidence of the truth of what I preach when 
I announce to them that I am He of whom the pro- 
phets spake, come from heaven to fulfil the hope of 
Israel, and to bless the sinful and miserable. It 
means rather: Tell John I am come full of grace in 
word and also in deed, as becomes the Anointed One 
of ancient prophecy. Bid him compare the facts of 
My ministry in both departments with the prophetic 
oracle beginning with the words : " The Spirit of the 



* Matthew xi. 5. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. j 5 7 

Lord is upon Me," and then judge for himself 
whether prophecy and fact do not correspond. 

The true view, then, of our Lord's miracles, is that 
they were an integral part of His ministry, and there- 
fore of the revelation of grace made therein, not mere 
credentials of that ministry and revelation ; that in 
so far as they were evidential, they were so just as 
His ministry in word was, and that the evidential 
value of all alike and altogether lay in this, that 
they were a revelation of God in the fulness of grace 
and truth. And the same observations apply in great 
measure to all the miracles in the Bible, those of the 
Old Testament not less than those of the New. A 
small proportion of the former were of the nature of 
bare signs intended to serve the purpose of accrediting 
God's messengers, or of aiding weak faith to believe 
in God's promises ; but, with the exception of these, 
all the rest were something more than evidential 
appendages. The miraculous birth of Isaac was not 
a mere sign, it was an important step in the onward 
march of revelation. The plagues of Egypt were not 
wrought to make Israel believe that Jehovah was the 
true God, but to effect the deliverance of Israel out 
of Egypt. Their evidence was internal to revelation, 
not external ; in them God was in the act of reveal- 
ing Himself as the Deliverer. The signs in the land of 
Ham, and those afterwards wrought in the wilderness, 
were not credentials appended to some system of 
doctrines, but direct manifestations of a gracious mind 
working itself out in Providence in favour of the op- 
pressed race of Abraham. 

In view of these undeniable facts, it becomes evi- 
dent how far Mr. Arnold's miracle of the change of a 



1 5 8 THE F UNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

pen into a pen-wiper is from being a fit type of the 
miracles recorded in Scripture. And with the true 
view of these miracles and their function in our 
minds, we can read with equanimity the words in 
which, under cover of a patronizing attitude of in- 
dulgence towards the ignorant multitude, Mr. Arnold 
treats miracles with contempt, and ridicules the use 
to which they are put by defenders of revealed relig- 
ion. " That miracles," he says, " when fully believed, 
are felt by men in general to be a source of authority, 
it is absurd to deny. One may say, indeed : Suppose 
I could change the pen with which I write this into a 
pen-wiper, I should not thus make what I write any 
the truer or more convincing. That may be so 
in reality, but the mass of mankind feel differently. 
In the judgment of the mass of mankind, could I vis- 
ibly and undeniably change the pen with which I 
write this into a pen-wiper, not only would this which 
I write acquire a claim to be held perfectly true and 
convincing, but I should even be entitled to affirm, 
and to be believed in affirming, propositions the most 
palpably at war with common fact and experience."* 
It is for the traditional school of apologists to answer 
this as best they can. I do not say that Mr. Arnold 
is invulnerable even from their point of view. He 
does, however, hit them hard, and make their argu- 
ment appear in a rather ridiculous light. But as for 
us, the polite irony of this modern Athenian does not 
touch us at all. For we regard miracles as integral 
parts of revelation, and not as bare arbitrary signs, 
like the change of a pen into a pen-wiper. And we 



* " Literature and Dogma," p. 128. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. \ 5 g 

know of no miracles of that sort ; on the contrary, 
we regard such prodigies as the kind of miracles which 
the Jews desired Jesus to work, but which He reso- 
lutely refused to work. Had the miracles of Jesus 
been like Mr. Arnold's imaginary one, I am afraid 
they would not have had the effect of gaining for Him 
implicit credence, even in affirmations palpably at 
war with common fact and experience. They might 
indeed have won for Him a temporary popularity, 
but only to insure a Nemesis of ultimate contempt 
and oblivion, the fate which awaits all professors of 
thaumaturgic arts. But the miracles neither of Jesus, 
nor of the Bible generally, are of that sort ; and un- 
less for the purpose of bringing into discredit the tra- 
ditional mode of putting the argument from miracles, 
the supposition of a pen changed into a pen-wiper in 
connection with this topic is an irrelevance, I had 
almost said an impertinence. 

The mode of conceiving the function of the Bible 
miracles has an important bearing, not only on the 
nature of these, but on the question as to the possi- 
bility of removing them from the Bible without ma- 
terially diminishing its value for the purposes of 
education. This question I alluded to in the close 
of the first chapter, in giving an account of Mr. Ar- 
nold's views as to the chief end or use of the Bible, 
contenting myself with simply stating it, and reserv- 
ing the discussion of it for a future opportunity. We 
have now come to the point at which we can with 
advantage consider that postponed topic. Can mira- 
cles then be, indeed, separated from the Bible without 
changing its character or lessening its value? Now 
we remember Mr. Arnold's opinion on this point, 



1 60 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

and his confident claim to have demonstrated his 
thesis, as set forth in the passage previously quoted. 
He regards miracles as a blot on the Bible, which all 
its admirers would wish to remove from its pages, as 
one would wish to clear a friend from any stain on 
his reputation. And he takes credit for having per- 
formed this service to the Bible, by demonstrating at 
length that, from beginning to end, its burthen is the 
supreme importance of righteousness. The precious- 
ness of the revelation contained in the older part of 
the book, the revelation made to Israel of " the im- 
measurable grandeur, the eternal necessity, the price- 
less blessing of that with which not less than three- 
fourths of human life is indeed concerned — righteous- 
ness," remains the same, whether we believe the 
stories about the miraculous passage through the Red 
Sea and the miraculous demolition of Jericho's 
mighty walls, or regard them as mere unhistorical 
legends. Now, on Mr. Arnold's view of the chief end 
of the Bible, his statement may be admitted to be 
partially true. Grant that the Old Testament con- 
tains only the record of a so-called revelation of the 
importance of righteousness, and not only the mira- 
cles named, but all other miracles become compara- 
tively useless. Comparatively only, not wholly ; for 
displays of Divine righteousness in miraculous judg- 
ments on evil doers and oppressors like the Egyptians, 
and miracles of deliverance wrought for the oppressed, 
might greatly help to deepen Israel's sense of the 
truth that verily there is a Power in the world, not 
ourselves, making for righteousness. I do not, how- 
ever, anxiously insist on this, because I rather desire 
to emphasize the previous question, viz., whether 



THE F UNC TION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. j 6 1 

Mr. Arnold's account of the chief end of the Bible be 
correct or adequate. How far miracles can or cannot 
be dispensed with, will largely depend on the answer 
to this question. Granting that to a didactic revela- 
tion of righteousness, miracles are comparatively 
superfluous, are they of as little consequence to a 
revelation of grace made by acts rather than by 
words — by acts of condescension, by acts revealing a 
special purpose, by acts forming a series knit together 
by the unity of a pervading plan, by acts culminating 
naturally in the Incarnation as the ne-plus-ultra of 
Divine condescension ? No ; for in that case the 
miracles perform an organic function in the revela- 
tion, constitute the heart and essence of the revelation. 
That grace cannot be manifested in any degree with- 
out miracle I do not affirm, for I admit that in the 
moral order of the world the rudiments of grace as 
well as of righteousness are recognisable. But I do 
say that the maximum of gracious possibility cannot 
be manifested without miracle, and that the more the 
miraculous element in the Bible is conserved, the 
more clearly does it appear that in that book we 
possess the record of a gradually unfolding gracious 
purpose. The more the acts by which God mani- 
fests His gracious will, stand out from the common 
course of nature, the more manifestly they serve the 
purpose intended. Take away miracle from a revela- 
tion of grace, and the revelation can hardly be known 
for what it is. Assume that it was merely a fancy 
that led Abraham to expect to become the founder 
of a nation destined to inherit a particular country, 
selected to be their home by Providence ; assume that 
the son through whom this dream was realised was 



1 62 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

born in the ordinary course of nature ; assume that, 
by a lucky combination of accidents of an untoward 
nature, the Egyptians were made glad to be rid of 
their bond-slaves ; assume that in all the incidents 
connected with the Exodus and the wilderness-life 
there was nothing out of the natural course, though 
possibly a certain amount of the unusual ; assume 
that in the conquest of the promised land there was 
no power at work in favour of Israel save the power of 
the sword and of brave hearts ; — and the consequence 
is, that in the whole history of the so-called chosen 
race, there is no clear revelation of a gracious purpose 
presiding over the course of events, and making all 
things work together for its own fulfilment. With 
the miracles retained as an essential part of the story, 
a gracious purpose towards a chosen people is indu- 
bitable ; without them it is very doubtful indeed. 
Remove the miraculous, and what remains is only a 
singular combination of events, having no casual con- 
nection with each other, by which it came to pass 
that an Eastern sheep-owner became the father of a 
nation, small comparatively in numbers, but consid- 
erable in importance and notable in history. The 
result may create surprise, and suggest the thought 
of some controlling influence at work, shaping events 
so that they might have this issue. But it is not 
more surprising than the products of nature, which 
exhibit in a wonderful degree an aspect of design 
suggesting a Designer, but not stringently proving it 
so as to exclude the contrary opinion. Retain the 
miracles, and the gracious purpose is stringently 
proved, and the contrary opinion excluded as unten- 
able. The miracles and the purpose thus stand or 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 163 

fall together. To certify, beyond all doubt, a gra- 
cious purpose, miracle is necessary. I do not say, I 
do not need to say, that all the remarkable events 
connected with Israel's history were in the strict sense 
miraculous. Given as much of miracle as makes evi- 
dent the fact of a gracious purpose, then we can afford 
to admit that this or that link in the chain of events 
whereby the purpose was fulfilled was not super- 
natural, save in the intentional use of it for such ful- 
filment, because God can and does work out His pur- 
poses by ordinary as well as by extraordinary Provi- 
dence. But unless some part of His working be 
supernatural, it is always possible to deny that con- 
scious Divine purpose and a living gracious Providence 
are revealed in human affairs. The only thing verifi- 
able is a neuter Power, or blind tendency working 
retributively for righteousness, or electively for the 
benefit of favoured individuals or races. 

The need for miracle to overcome doubt, becomes 
still more apparent when the moral condition of man 
is taken into account. The sin which creates the ne- 
cessity for a revelation of grace, also makes the re- 
cipient of revelation indisposed to believe that the 
Divine thoughts towards him are thoughts of peace, 
unobservant of the traces of grace in nature and Prov- 
idence, therefore slow to understand the loving-kind- 
ness of the Lord. An evil conscience is sceptical con- 
cerning Divine benignity, prone to fear and apprehen- 
sive of the worst, ready enough to recognise the traces 
of the Judge, backward to discern the countenance 
of the Father. The trusting spirit which rests in the 
truth of the Divine Fatherliness has first to be created ; 
there is an antecedent distrust to be subdued by a 



1 64 THE F UNCTJON OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 

special display of love so signal as to render unbelief, 
on the part even of the most faithless, all but impos- 
sible. This special display we discover in the mirac- 
ulous deeds of God recorded in the Bible. These 
deeds God wrought to make His grace manifest and 
undeniable to sinful men ; and not otherwise, as Rothe 
has well remarked, could He have made it manifest 
to such recipients of His favour. 

In full accordance with these views as to the neces- 
sity of miracle in connection with a revelation of grace, 
are the representations of Scripture. A marked em- 
phasis is laid by the Bible writers, — psalmists and 
prophets, — on the marvellousness of God's works, in 
connection with thanksgivings for His grace. " Re- 
member His marvellous works that He hath done ; 
His wonders and the judgments of His mouth." The 
wonders referred to are those wrought in the land of 
Ham ; and the psalmist accordingly closes his song of 
praise by declaring these wonders to be a fulfilment 
of God's gracious purpose and promise. " For He re- 
membered His holy promise, and Abraham His ser- 
vant. And He brought forth His people with joy, 
and His chosen with gladness : and gave them the 
lands of the heathen : and they inherited the labour 
of the people ; that they might observe His statutes, 
and keep His laws."* 

Still more remarkable is the emphasis laid on the 
miraculous power of God by the unknown Prophet of 
the Exile. Having in his view the second great man- 
ifestation of God's redeeming grace towards Israel, 
the deliverance from captivity in Babylon, the prophet 



* Psalm cv. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 1 65 

claims for the Divine Redeemer, in the most absolute 
manner, a power of miraculous initiative. The God 
of this new deliverance needs to be, and accordingly 
in the prophetic idea He is, one capable of doing new 
things. Not only so : He is capable of doing new 
things in new ways. The prophet claims for God a 
twofold originality : not only in the matter, but also 
in the manner of His wondrous works. Whereas of 
old the miracle consisted in making a way through 
the sea, the new miracle is to consist in an achieve- 
ment of an opposite kind, viz., in making a way in the 
wilderness, and rivers in the desert* It is a poetical 
representation, doubtless, but it is more, even the 
pregnant suggestion of the deep philosophical truth, 
that the God of grace is utterly exempt from bondage 
either to the fixed course of nature, or to the past 
course of history. He is not obliged in His action to 
keep within the groove of natural law, or to conform 
to ancient precedent. His power was not exhausted 
in the first creation, nor His invention in the means 
by which in former times He accomplished His ends. 
There is no limit to His power, no limit to His capac- 
ity for new ideas. " He fainteth not, neither is weary, 
and there is no searching of His understanding.'^ 
Surely a most worthy conception of God, superior far 
to that cherished either by philosophic naturalism or 
by theological conservatism, one of which denies to 
God the power of doing absolutely new things, and 
the other, while ascribing to God miraculous power, 
virtually denies to Him the power of doing new things 
in new ways, and makes Him the slave of old modes 



* Isaiah xliii. 18, 19. f Isaiah xl. 28. 

8* 



1 66 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

of action, obliged to repeat Himself, and debarred by 
venerable custom from every form of activity that 
wears the aspect of innovation. The prophetic con- 
ception is the most congenial to the revelation of grace ; 
and wherever strong faith in such a revelation, — faith 
worthy to be called evangelical, — prevails, this con- 
ception of God will be welcome. Witness Christ 
Himself, who thought it no reproach to His Gospel 
that it was novel — a new wine and a new garment ; 
and Paul, who, with obvious reference to the pro- 
phetic oracle above alluded to, claimed it as a mark 
of the Divine origin of Christianity, that it made all 
things new.* 

It thus appears that miracle cannot be separated 
from the Old Testament without changing its charac- 
ter and lessening its value. In removing the miracu- 
lous, you change the fact-basis from which your idea 
of the chief end of revelation is formed. The He- 
brew Bible, as the record of a so-called revelation, 
may still remain a very excellent book ; and it may 
be a very good service rendered to society in these 
sceptical times, to show how much edifying matter 
remains after the Zeitgeist has expurgated from the 
old book all that it does not relish. All I mean to say 
is, that the Hebrew Bible is quite a different sort of 
book after the process of expurgation ; and the reve- 
lation of which it is the record is of an altogether al- 
tered, and may I not say much inferior, character. 
And if this be true of the Hebrew Bible, it is if pos- 
sible still more emphatically true of the New Testa- 
ment. Mr. Arnold thinks he can accomplish the feat 

* 2 Cor. v. 17. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION \ 67 

of purging the New Testament of miracle without 
detriment to its intrinsic worth, by treating the 
miraculous narratives, with exception of the healing 
miracles (which are deemed capable of being reduced 
to natural events by means of the as yet little studied 
science of Moral Therapeutics*), as legendary tales 
due to the pious credulity and miracle-mongering 
spirit of the honest but often mistaken reporters, and 
by laying stress on those gospel sayings which, with 
his critical acumen, he can certify to be the genuine 
logia of Jesus. The essence of Christ's religion is 
quite independent of miracles, for it consists in these 
two things : a method of attaining the reward of 
righteousness, and a secret ; the method, inwardness, 
the secret self-denial. Now here, again, a part, and 
not the most important part, is taken for the whole. 
That Christ did teach the ethical doctrines Mr. 
Arnold ascribes to Him has been already admitted. 
But the proclamation of these truths, as I have also 
already pointed out, was not the whole of His mis- 
sion. Whether we take the Synoptists, or Mr. 
Arnold's favourite Evangelist, the author of the 
fourth gospel, as our authority, we must come to 
this conclusion. The Synoptists put into Christ's 
mouth what the keenest critical acumen must recog- 
nise as a genuine saying, oft-repeated it would seem, 
" the Son of Man came to save the lost." John, in 
the prologue of his gospel, says: "the Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and 



* On this favourite device of modern naturalism, to enable it to 
recognise the historical character of the Gospel record without do- 
ing violence to its philosophy, vide my work on the " Humiliation 
of Christ," second edition, Lecture V. 



1 68 THE FUNCTION OF MIRA CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

truth." The foremost idea of all the evangelists is, 
" Jesus Christ a manifestation, in its fulness, of Divine 
grace." Now the question is: Can you separate 
the miraculous from the gospels, and retain this as 
the leading idea of Christ's ministry — Divine grace 
revealed in fulness? No: the Incarnation itself is 
involved in the idea ; for if the Incarnation is not 
true, then the revelation of grace falls short of what 
we can conceive it to be. And how congruous to the 
idea of God become flesh and dwelling among men 
full of grace that forth-flowing of Divine power in 
all directions to beneficent effects, to which Jesus ap- 
pealed in proof that He was Christ ! Without these 
miracles, — for so I must continue to regard them, 
with all due deference to u moral therapeutics," — 
Jesus had been a living contradiction ; full of grace as 
a copious gushing spring, yet a well without water. 
He must do miracles, not in order to prove formally 
that He is what He claims to be, but to be consistent 
with Himself, true to Himself, like Himself. What 
can the spring do but flow ? and what should Incar- 
nate Grace do but be gracious, according to the 
measure of His power, doing good in every possible 
way as one full of the enthusiasm of humanity? 

To this, however, it may be replied : Yes, in every 
possible way ; but the question is, What ways are 
possible? Must not physical miracles be excluded 
as impossible? Even after they are excluded, are 
there not left in the gospel narratives materials for 
constructing the idea of a very gracious Saviour, at 
once able and willing to help us in our manifold 
infirmities? Have we not still a perfectly holy and a 
perfectly loving being, who, both by His holiness and 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 



69 



by His love can lay hold of the sinful and lift them 
out of their degradation into a very heaven of peace 
and purity? Such in effect is the Christ recently 
offered to our faith and worship by Dr. Abbott with 
an earnestness of conviction deserving of our highest 
respect.* But whether we can rationally or perma- 
nently rest in such a Christ, is another question. A 
Christ perfectly loving, who does no miracles such as 
those recorded in the Gospels, is certainly no contra- 
diction, if miracles are impossible ; for love cannot 
be expected to work impossibilities. But is a Christ 
perfectly sinless, yet incapable of physical miracles, 
not a contradiction? The only legitimate ground 
for the assertion that Christ could not work physical 
miracles, is that taken up by philosophic natural- 
ism — that the miraculous in every form is impos- 
sible. But is not a sinless being a miracle, not less 
really that it is a miracle in the moral instead of 
in the physical sphere? It is so regarded by all 
naturalistic theologians, such as Keim, who accord- 
ingly does not hesitate to ascribe to Jesus moral 
defects, while fully acknowledging His general ex- 
cellence. Unquestionably this is the philosophically 
consistent view to which all deniers of the miraculous 
must ultimately come. The alternatives we have to 
choose from, therefore, are : a Christ miraculous in 
His person, character, and work; or a Christ miracu- 
lous in none of these respects, not even in respect of 
character, but at most only a remarkably good, wise, 
and humane man. Such a man is doubtless some- 
thing to be thankful for; but he is hardly what 



* Vide " Oxford Sermons " ; also, " Through Nature to Christ." 



170 



THE FUNCTION OF MIRACLE IN RE VELA TION. 



humanity needs for its Saviour and Lord. He who 
is to occupy that high position must be divine and 
sinless ; and none who with full intelligence see in 
Christ the Wonderful in these two respects, can long 
hesitate as to the other elements of wonder. It does 
indeed take some courage in these scientific times to 
continue to believe in the Gospel miracles, however 
historical the narratives may appear ; and it requires, 
perhaps, more courage still to hold fast the oldfash- 
ioned faith unabashed by the grand oracular manner 
in which Mr. Arnold, inspired by the Zeitgeist, settles 
the vexed question of miracles by a wave of the hand 
so to speak, or, to speak literally, by a single quota- 
tion from Shakspeare. " It is," says the apostle of 
modern culture, " what we call the time-spirit that is 
sapping the proof from miracles ; it is the Zeitgeist 
itself. Whether we attack them or whether we de- 
fend them does not much matter ; the human mind, 
as its experience widens, is turning away from them."* 
If this be indeed so, then to continue believing in 
miracles is to run the risk of being voted a Philistine, 
and to defend one's opinion is a waste of time. But 
for our comfort let us remember that the Zeitgeist is 
a sprite of changeable humour, and that the faith in 
miracle has been again and again discarded as out of 
date, and taken up again as faith in Divine grace re- 
vived ; a fact corroborative of our instinctive con- 
viction that miracles and a revelation of grace go 
together. 

But at this point we are reminded of the dictum of 
Spinoza, that miracles, far from revealing the highest 



* " Literature and Dogma," p. 129. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 



i;i 



truth concerning God, do not reveal even the lowest 
and most elementary, not even the fact that God ex- 
ists ; the proof being, that if miracles mean events 
whose causes are unknown, they are simply things 
incomprehensible, therefore things from which we can 
learn nothing ; and if they mean events contrary to 
.nature, they tend rather to breed scepticism as to the 
Divine existence than faith in God, inasmuch as what 
is contrary to nature is contrary to the first notions 
on which our belief in the existence of God is based.* 
Now, as Dr. Mozley has pointed out, Spinoza regards 
a miracle as a mere marvel, beginning and ending 
with itself. And it cannot be denied that when so 
regarded a miracle is an event to which no significance 
can be attached. The only effect of an isolated 
prodigy, is to make beholders stare. But it is alto- 
gether otherwise with a miracle viewed in relation to 
other events which tend to give it meaning, say, such 
a miracle as the healing of the blind man, taken in 
connection with a previous intimation given by Christ 
of an intention to restore to him his sight. Dr. 
Mozley remarks, that " the evidential function of a 
miracle is based upon the common argument of de- 
sign as proved by coincidence. The greatest marvel 
or interruption of the order of nature occurring by 
itself, as the very consequence of being connected 
with nothing, proves nothing ; but if it takes place in 
connection with the word or act of a person, that co- 
incidence proves design in the marvel and makes it a 
miracle ; and if that person professes to report a 
message or revelation from heaven, the coincidence, 



* Vide chapter i. p. 37. 



172 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TICN. 



again, of the miracle with the professed message from 
God, proves design on the part of God to warrant or 
authorize the message. The mode in which a miracle 
acts as evidence, is thus exactly the same in which 
any extraordinary coincidence acts : it rests upon the 
general argument of design, though the particular 
design is special and appropriate to the miracle."* 
This passage explains how a miracle may reveal 
something of God, even when regarded as a sign 
expressly wrought for an evidential purpose. Even 
an arbitrary miracle like that supposed by Mr. 
Arnold, by being previously fixed on and prean- 
nounced as to be wrought for the purpose of accred- 
iting a divine messenger, would thereby cease to be a 
mere prodigy, and become a revelation of Divine 
thought. But the value of miracles as sources of 
knowledge concerning God, is greatly enhanced when 
they are regarded, not as signs attached to, but as 
integral parts of a revelation, and further, not as iso- 
lated displays of power, but as interdependent mem- 
bers of a great organism of revelation in which a Divine 
purpose is immanent throughout. Suppose that the 
miracles of Christ had been mainly of the nature of 
prodigies wrought for the avowed and preannounced 
purpose of substantiating His claims. In that case 
they would of themselves reveal nothing concerning 
the worker except that He was in possession of very 
remarkable power, and that He wished to be taken 
and might reasonably be taken for what He claimed 
to be. But the actual fact is, that Christ's miracles 
were direct revelations of Himself, revelations of the 



* " Bampton Lectures," p. 24. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIRA CLE IN RE VELA TION. \ 73 

inmost thoughts of His heart, insomuch that in their 
absence we should with difficulty believe Him to be 
what He claimed to be ; not for the reason given by 
Dr. Mozley, that to proclaim Himself God's eternal 
Son, the Saviour of the world and the head of the 
Divine kingdom, without substantiating His claims 
by miracles, would indicate madness or insanity ; but 
because in that case, as already indicated, He would 
be in contradiction to Himself, and present the spec- 
tacle of a character assumed, but not sustained or 
played out. On the other hand, with the recorded 
miracles as an integral portion of His history, we feel 
that Christ presents to our view a thoroughly con- 
sistent harmonious character, in which every feature 
we looked for is fully developed, and all bear out the 
title, " God manifest in the flesh in the fulness of 
grace." 

The true key to the Spinozan doctrine as to the 
valuelessness of miracles for the purpose of revealing 
God is a speculative conception of the universe which 
excludes miracle as impossible. Miracles can prove 
nothing only to those to whom they themselves can- 
not be proved. Every man who believes in miracles 
as matters of fact sees in them this much at least : a 
supernatural power or will at work. A miracle be- 
lieved in as an actual occurrence, reveals the presence 
of a non-natural causality ; that is to say, of a will ; 
for will is the only supernatural power with which we 
are acquainted. Men of a sceptical temper, however, 
will hardly be persuaded that a miracle in the strict 
sense, i.e., an event which could not have had a nat- 
ural cause, has occurred. We could conceive such 
men witnessing some of the miraculous events in our 



1 74 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 

Lord's life, and finding themselves unable to deny the 
" sensible fact," and unable to account for it ; yet 
hesitating to draw the inference that it had a super- 
natural cause, and contenting themselves with regard- 
ing it as an inexplicable phenomenon. This is, in- 
deed, the position taken up by Baden Powell, in his 
essay on miracles, in " Essays and Reviews." His 
thesis is that no testimony can reach to the supernat- 
ural, or prove more than that something extraordinary 
and perhaps unaccountable has taken place. That it 
is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on 
the previous belief or assumption of the parties. This 
dogma either amounts to the truism that the senses 
do not actually perceive the supernatural cause, but 
only supply material for a rational inference as to the 
presence of such causes, or it signifies that no testi- 
mony can establish a fact for which no other than a 
supernatural explanation can be suggested. That the 
writer referred to had the latter thought in his mind 
is clear from these words : " The proposition that an 
event may be so incredible intrinsically as to set aside 
any degree of testimony, in no way applies to or af- 
fects the honesty or veracity of that testimony, or the 
reality of the impressions on the minds of the wit- 
nesses, so far as it relates to the matter of sensible fact 
simply. It merely means this, that from the nature 
of our antecedent convictions the probability of some 
kind of mistake or deception somewhere, though we 
know not where, is -greater than the probability of the 
event really happening in the way, and from the 
causes, assigned." In other words, two doors are 
open to the sceptic who wishes to escape from the 
supernatural. The one, This fact admitted to be 



THE FWNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 



175 



such as witnessed or reported, may have had a natu- 
ral cause ; the other, This fact for which as witnessed 
or reported no natural cause can be conceived, may 
not have happened as it appears, or has been reported. 
The senses of witnesses may have been deceived. 
For one who is resolved always to make his escape 
from faith in miracles by one or other of these doors, 
the dictum that testimony cannot reach to the super- 
natural really means there is no supernatural to be 
reached. On the other hand, when the supernatural 
is regarded as real and accessible, miracles will be 
considered at least possible. It will not be assumed 
that escape may always be effected by one or other 
of the doors indicated. There may still, of course, be 
a very praiseworthy desire to verify the miraculous 
fact. But a fact of the kind will be deemed verifia- 
ble, and when verified it will be held to be evidence 
of a supernatural cause or will at work. 

This, however, does not amount to much in the 
way of revelation, especially when it is considered 
that according to the Bible doctrine, miracles may be 
wrought not merely by the will of God, but also by 
other supernatural agents, not even obedient to God, 
but acting contrary to the interests of His kingdom. 
It has been thought by opponents of revelation that 
this fact is fatal to the evidential function of miracles. 
This, however, is too sweeping an inference. The 
fact merely shows that some consideration of miracu- 
lous manifestations is necessary in order to eliminate 
doubt as to the character and purpose of the Being 
who is at work. This is certainly the case. The 
mere fact that a supernatural power has been dis- 
played does not of itself indicate with whom I have 



1 76 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

to do. It simply shows that I am in contact with a 
higher will of some kind, good or evil. Whether 
good or evil, remains to be determined by the nature 
of the transactions. I learn with whom I have to do 
in miraculous acts, just as I learn with what manner 
of persons I have to do in my intercourse with my 
fellow-men. Here the law applies : " by their fruits 
ye shall know them." Christ appealed to that law in 
connection with His own miracles. " If I cast out 
devils by the spirit of God, then the kingdom of 
God is come unto you." It will be seen that this 
sort of evidence is cumulative in its effect. The 
revelation of the moral character of the higher 
will that is at work is made gradually; it becomes 
clear as the number of acts are multiplied, and as 
their mutual connection becomes apparent, evincing 
the existence of a purpose indicative of a certain 
mind. It is thus we come to know the moral 
character of human wills ; it is just in the same 
way we come to know the character of a super- 
human will. One act of miraculous power suffices to 
reveal the presence of a higher will, and to start the 
enquiry, what sort of a will is this which I see work- 
ing ? It is possible that the very first act may reveal 
the nature of the will, just as there are single actions 
performed by men which leave us in little doubt as 
to what manner of men they are. But in connection 
with acts performed by supernatural agency, it is 
natural that we should be slower in coming to a con- 
clusion, and need a number of acts, all - of kindred 
import, to reveal the moral character of the source of 
power. Such seems to have been the case of Christ's 
disciples. They believed in Him after a fashion on 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 



1 77 



the very first display of miraculous power ; but their 
first faith was provisional and stood in need of con- 
firmation. And it received the confirmation which 
it needed, from every new exercise of miraculous 
power by their Master, until at length it was esta- 
blished beyond the possibility of being shaken, so 
that even when their now well-known Leader spoke 
in a way which shocked hearers and sent multitudes 
of lightly attached disciples away in disgust, they 
could calmly abide with Him and say: "We believe 
and are sure that Thou art the Holy One of God."* 
In a similar way was the faith of Israel in Jehovah 
established. When Israel's God began that course 
of action which had for its aim and issue the Exodus, 
the question was raised : Who is this that is showing 
Himself to us ? Moses told them at the outset : " I 
Am hath sent me unto you." That was, so to speak, 
the hypothesis to be verified inductively by subse- 
quent events. By the time they got to the farther 
shore of the Red Sea, the emancipated slaves could 
have little doubt that a friendly divinity had been at 
work on their behalf, and were prepared to sing the 
song of triumph led by Miriam : 

" The Lord is my strength and song, and He is become my sal- 
vation, 
He is my God, and I will prepare Him an habitation, 
My father's God, and I will exalt Him." 

The sympathy with the oppressed against the op- 
pressor, displayed in the whole course of the Exodus, 
revealed a beneficent Being. The wonders wrought 
in the land of Ham revealed a mighty Being. The 



* John vi. 70. 



1 78 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

1 

overthrow of the Egyptian host and of Egypt's great 
king, and the contempt poured on Egypt's gods by 
the demonstration of their impotence, showed the 
beneficent higher power to be the King of kings and 
God of gods. 

These examples suggest the thought that the know- 
ledge of God through His extraordinary Providence, 
is reached in the same way as the knowledge of God 
through His ordinary Providence. All theists believe 
that we may competently attempt to learn something 
concerning God from nature and from history. Some 
even who are not theists admit that we may form 
from the same sources some conclusions regarding 
the existence of a moral order of the world. And 
all, theists and non-theists, admit that the knowledge 
thus acquired is the result of an inductive process. 
A single event in Providence or history may be of 
very dubious significance ; many isolated events are 
of very indeterminate character, leaving room for the 
question : Is God indeed good to Israel, does He 
really care for the right ; is He not rather a Being to 
whom right and wrong, good and evil, are matters 
of indifference, so far removed from the world that 
such distinctions are invisible to His eye ? But when 
a large and a connected view of history is taken it 
becomes apparent to the enquirer that there is in- 
deed a God that doeth righteousness, " a Power, not 
ourselves, making for righteousness." Just so is the 
character of God read off from the phenomena of 
extraordinary or miraculous Providence. Isolated 
miracles, like isolated events in the ordinary course 
of history, may leave it doubtful who or what man- 
ner of being the agent is ; but the doubt is elimi- 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 



179 



nated as the series of miraculous acts lengthens, and 
the purpose by which the whole series is pervaded 
becomes increasingly clear, till at length the bene- 
ficent power who has been at work is openly and 
fully revealed. It would be hard for Abraham to 
recognise the suggestion to sacrifice Isaac as a voice 
coming from a God who was his gracious Benefactor. 
It would need a second voice, rescuing at the last 
moment the destined victim, to indicate the source 
of the first. But taken altogether the Divine acts of 
self-manifestation to the patriarch could leave no 
doubt on the mind of the latter that the Being with 
whom he had to do was his Friend. God's dealings 
with Abraham, on review, could not but appear lumi- 
nous with a gracious purpose. In like manner one 
or two isolated miracles out of the whole number of 
wondrous works wrought by Christ might excusably 
puzzle the beholder. But no candid mind surveying 
the whole series could have made the suggestion that 
these miracles were wrought by the power of Satan 
or any of his servants. Celsus can hardly have been 
in earnest when he insinuated that the miracles of 
the gospel were like the tricks of magicians. At all 
events, by making the suggestion he gave his Chris- 
tian opponent the opportunity of offering a very 
complete and crushing reply. " Show me," said 
Origen, " the magician who calls upon the spectators 
of his prodigies to reform their life, or who teaches 
his admirers the fear of God, and seeks to persuade 
them to act as those who must appear before Him 
as their judge. The magicians do nothing of the 
sort, either because they are incapable of it, or be- 
cause they have no such desire. Themselves charged 






1 80 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

with crimes the most shameful and infamous, how 
should they attempt the reformation of the morals 
of others ? The miracles of Christ, on the contrary, 
all bear the impress of His own holiness, and He 
ever uses them as the means of winning to the cause 
of goodness and truth those who witnessed them. 
Thus He presented His own life as the perfect model, 
not only to His immediate disciples, but to all men. 
If such was the life of Jesus, how can He be compared 
to mere charlatans, and why may we not believe that 
He was indeed God manifested in the flesh, for the 
salvation of our race ? "* 

In the foregoing observations I have virtually dis- 
posed of a problem which, in the older apologetic 
treatises, is thus formulated : Do the miracles prove 
the doctrine, or does the doctrine prove the miracles? 
The question arises out of the fact that in the Script- 
ure it is contemplated as a possible case that miracles 
might be wrought by agents of evil bias, and show- 
ing their evil bias by teaching false doctrine. It is a 
question which concerns those who regard miracles 
chiefly as evidential signs, attached externally to a 
doctrinal revelation, much more nearly than those 
who look on miracles not as mere signs, but as sources 
of doctrine. The problem, however, remains for 
them also, but in an altered form. For them doc- 
trine and miracles go together as manifestations of 
character or purpose, like the words and deeds, faith 
and life, of an ordinary human agent. In all mani- 
festations of character, whether by word or by deed, 



* Origen, "Contra Celsum," i. 68. PressensS, "Martyrs and 
Apologists," pp. 619-20. 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 1 8 1 

in the case of ordinary agents, or in the case of ex- 
traordinary, there may be an element of ambiguity, 
and the problem is to show how that element of am- 
biguity is to be eliminated, so that the character, 
spirit, and purposes of the agent may be certainly 
known. And our answer is, that the ambiguity is 
gradually eliminated as the mind of the agent un- 
folds itself in action. Whether the actions through 
which character is revealed be natural or supernatural, 
makes no difference. 

This being so, it will be at once apparent what an 
advantage it must be to be placed in a position 
whence it is possible to survey the whole series of 
acts whereby God manifested Himself to the world 
as the God of grace. This is our case, and being so 
placed we are in some respects more favoured than 
the first recipients of revelation, who had the oppor- 
tunity of witnessing some of God's wondrous works. 
Our first impression, probably, is that we who live in 
an age so far removed from the years of the right 
hand of the Most High, are at a great disadvantage 
as believers in revelation compared to those to whom 
God manifested Himself directly as the Revealer. 
We fancy that they had in it their power to be much 
surer that a revelation was actually being made than 
we can be that a revelation has been made. But this 
is to a large extent a delusion. The evidence to us 
that a revelation has been given is the character of 
the revelation viewed as a whole, including miracles 
and prophecies as part and parcel thereof. To a the- 
ist it is intrinsically credible that the living loving 
God in whom he believes will reveal Himself in his- 
tory, in the fulness of His grace. He does not pre- 

9 



1 82 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

tend to demonstrate a priori that God must do so, 
but with his conception of God he will not be incre- 
dulous as to the fact of His having done so ; and, if 
on a conjunct view of the alleged revelation in its 
whole lengthened course, he find the self-manifesta- 
tion of God in grace God-worthy, he will accept the 
revelation as a veritable one, until very cogent reasons 
have been adduced why he should not. Now this is 
the actual state of the case. The alleged revelation, 
as it lies before us recorded in the Book, is God- 
worthy. And as it lies there, a completed revelation, 
we are in a position to feel the force of the internal 
evidence arising out of its God-worthiness, with far 
more effect than the first recipients. They had the 
advantage of being eye-witnesses of God's miraculous 
self-manifestation as the omnipotent, omniscient One ; 
in regard to that we are dependent on their testimony, 
and on the historical record, which cannot produce 
as great a degree of certainty as seeing for one's self 
yields. But, on the other hand, we have the com- 
pensating advantage that the completed drama of 
revelation is before our eye, revealing in all its moral 
sublimity the gracious condescension of the Most 
High, stooping down to the level of His sinful creat- 
ures, "to revive the spirit of the humble, and to re- 
vive the heart of the contrite ones." And the result 
is that, unless our conception of God be such as to 
render that drama of grace impossible, the sublime 
spectacle produces conviction, and we take the whole 
to be what it gives itself out for, a veritable super- 
natural Revelation. We, in the end of days, when 
the long process of evolution is complete, far removed 
from the time when God made Himself known to 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION 1 8 3 

the fathers, are, compared to them, like men who 
contemplate the whole cosmos as an evidence of a 
Divine Designer, compared to persons whose atten- 
tion is engrossed by a single striking instance of 
design. The men of revelation had under their eye 
single instances of Divine grace revealed in miracles 
and prophecies, or, at most, a limited number of in- 
stances. We, on the other hand, have before our 
eye a complete system of Divine self-manifestations, 
spread over thousands of years, made to many differ- 
ent individuals ; and observing the harmony which 
pervades the whole, and the gracious mind that gives 
unity to the long series, we feel as strongly convinced 
that we have here God manifesting Himself in grace, 
as in contemplating the cosmos of nature we feel 
assured that therein is revealed a wise and beneficent 
Maker and Preserver of all. 

In the whole of the preceding discussion we have 
been regarding miracles as something more and 
higher than evidential signs of a doctrinal revela- 
tion ; as constituting, not merely proving, a revela- 
tion. It may be well in conclusion to remark, though 
it scarcely needs to be formally pointed out, that 
miracles may imply much more about God than they 
expressly reveal, and may sustain, as the foundation 
of a doctrinal edifice, much more than they contain. 
Besides revealing a positive purpose of grace, they 
may teach, by implication, essential truth concerning 
the nature of God, e.g., the doctrine of His Person- 
ality. This statement will be illustrated and vindi- 
cated more fully when we come to consider the doc- 
trinal significance of revelation ; meantime I take 
occasion to refer to an objection brought by Lessing 



1 84 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

to the competency of miracles to reveal or justify 
belief in eternal truth. In a tractate on " The Demon- 
stration of Spirit and of Power" the demonstration 
of spirit meaning prophecy, and the demonstration 
of power, miracles, he maintains the thesis, that his- 
tory, even miraculous history, can never be the basis 
of faith in eternal truth. Without calling in question 
the historical value of the sacred writings, he affirms 
that as no historical truth can be demonstrated, so 
nothing can be demonstrated through historical 
truths. That is, he goes on to say, in large capitals, 
as if the statement were of vast moment, accidental 
historical truths can never be the demonstration of 
necessary truths of reason. The real drift of this 
famous dictum is that revelation is of very little im- 
portance, because through such a revelation as we 
have in Scripture we could not be sure of anything 
being true unless we had other means of attaining 
unto certainty, viz., reason. The only function left 
to revelation on this view is that of suggesting 
thoughts to be afterwards verified by reason. The 
position laid down with such oracular confidence is 
thoroughly characteristic of the eighteenth century, 
and specially of the Aufklaring period, whether we 
have regard to the conception of revelation as having 
for its aim to put in circulation abstract ideas, or to 
the mean estimate implied therein of the value of 
history. It might be sufficient to say in the way of 
reply that the end of revelation is not merely or 
chiefly to put in circulation ideas of reason, but to 
reveal God Himself in an aspect which the human 
mind can recognise as God-worthy, but which it could 
not without revelation be sure of; not merely be- 



THE F UNC TION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. t. 8 5 

cause the truth revealed is so majestic we hardly dare 
to entertain it, but also because that truth without 
revelation by action would not be true, inasmuch as 
grace which is never manifested in deeds, is no grace 
at all. Not that we hold God bound to manifest 
Himself in grace ; we recognise fully the Divine free- 
dom and sovereignty. Nevertheless, God being what 
we know Him to be, the manifestation of Himself in 
grace, given the fact of sin, might be said to be a 
matter of course ; and equally a matter of course 
might we regard the self-manifestation of God as 
Fatherly love irrespective of the fact of sin ; such a 
revelation being to a sinless world what a revelation 
of grace is to a sinful world.* The truth that God 
is love is not a necessary truth like the truths of 
mathematics, nor a merely accidental truth like the 
historical fact of the invasion of Britain by Julius 
Caesar. It resembles rather the truths of physical 
science, such as the law of gravitation or the compo- 
sition of light, truths for the discovery of which ob- 
servation is necessary, yet truths which once ascer- 
tained are as certain as any proposition in Euclid, 
though not in the strict sense necessary truths. 

Such is the nature of the truth expressly revealed 
by miracle and prophecy, viz., the Divine purpose of 
grace. But I have said that truths of an essential or 
necessary character, such as the Divine Personality, 
may be implied in a miracle-revelation; it is there- 
fore needful to consider the question raised by Les- 
sing, how far historical miraculous facts can avail to 
sustain faith in such truths. Lessing argues thus. 



* So Schweitzer. 



1 86 THE FUNCTION OF MIRACLE IN REVELATION. 

Suppose I have nothing to object to the statement 
that Christ raised a dead man, must I therefore hold 
it as true that God has a Son, His equal in essence ? 
If I have no objection to make to the historical 
truth of the statement that Christ Himself rose 
from the dead, must I therefore regard this risen 
one as the Son of God ? That Christ, against whose 
resurrection I can offer no historical objections of 
weight, gave Himself out on account of His resur- 
rection as the Son of God, and that His disciples 
on that account held Him to be such, I heartily 
believe. But now with these historical truths to 
spring into an entirely different class of truths, and 
to desire of me that I should alter all my meta- 
physical and moral ideas in conformity therewith ; 
to suggest to me that I must change all my funda- 
mental ideas of the essence of God — if that is not 
a jtSTdfiaffiZ £zV aXko ykvo$ y I do not know what 
Aristotle meant by the expression.* To this at- 
tempt to rob historical facts of all moral and theo- 
logical significance it is enough to reply, that what 
Lessing objects to in his own case, as an unreason- 
able demand, has been realized in thousands of in- 
stances. Facts believed changing men's whole way 
of thinking about God, and man, and the world, and 
their relations to each other, their whole theory of 
the universe, in short, is not so rare a phenomenon 
that philosophers should hold up their hands in 
astonishment at the very idea as absurd. This was 
what happened when the nations were converted 



* From the above-mentioned tractate, " Ueber den Beweis des 
Geistes und der Kraft." 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION i 8 7 

to Christianity. What was it that led men to cast 
away idols and to worship one God, Maker and Up- 
holder of the world, and to believe in the life eternal, 
with such firmness that fear of death was utterly ban- 
ished from their breasts? It was the Christian body 
of facts, recorded in the Gospels ; the belief in Jesus 
Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, for the world's salva- 
tion. It was not, as has been well pointed out, a fine 
scheme of truths of reason, such as that God is one, 
and that the human soul is immortal, which made the 
early Christians so obstinate in their resistance to 
temptations to apostasy, and so brave to endure mar- 
tyrdom. " The stress of that compulsion which car- 
ried so many men, women, and youths through the 
endurance of tortures, even to death, and which 
brought so many apostates, pallid and trembling, to 
the tribunals, there to clear themselves, at the cost of 
their souls, of the fatal suspicion — this compulsion 
sprang wholly from the perfect conviction they had 
of the certainty of that body of facts, which constitu- 
ted, and in which consisted, their religious belief. The 
body of facts, not an opinion of the truth of principles, 
was the impulsive cause of that endurance of suffer- 
ing."* So notoriously true is this* that it is hard to 
believe that Lessing was seriously persuaded of the 
truth of those facts which he sought to isolate from 
his philosophical and theological creed. Believe the 
resurrection of Christ, and yet retain one's precon- 
ceived ideas of God, say those of Spinoza, to which, 
according to the testimony of Jacobi, Lessing was 
more than half inclined ? Impossible ! Spinoza did 



* "The Restoration of Belief," p. 66. 



1 88 THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CLE IN RE VELA TION. 

not believe in the resurrection of Christ, and he well 
knew why ; his idea of the essence of God made it 
impossible that he should. Lessing did not with his 
whole heart believe in Christ's resurrection any more 
than Spinoza; else he could not have imagined it pos- 
sible to treat such an event as one having no specu- 
lative significance, no bearing on the theory of the 
universe. The true attitude of Lessing towards the 
" facts" of Christianity comes out towards the end of 
the treatise already referred to, where he states that 
he believes Christianity for its own sake quite irre- 
spective of the question whether the history related 
in the Gospel be true or not. The moral truths of 
Christianity are the ripe fruit of so-called miracles and 
prophecies. Why should I not satiate myself with 
them ? What does it matter to me whether the tale 
be false or true ; the fruits are excellent. 

So it comes to this at last ; let us take the moral 
essence of Christianity which commends itself to our 
minds, and trouble ourselves no more about the his- 
tory. The history is but the shell, this is the kernel ; 
let us enjoy the sweetness of the kernel, and throw 
the shell without regret aside. But the question is: 
Does the kernel remain, after the so-called shell is 
cast away ? It may, on the eighteenth-century idea 
of what the kernel consisted in ; abstract ideas of rea- 
son, about God, duty, and immortality ; or on the no- 
tion of Christianity current in our own day, as con- 
sisting simply in an ethical spirit. But if, as we have 
contended all through, it be God manifesting Himself 
in grace, then we cannot part with the shell without 
at the same time parting with the kernel. Self-re- 
vealing grace is history, or it is nothing at all. It is 



THE FUNCTION OF MIR A CIE IN RE VELA TION. \ 89 

supernatural facts to begin with working themselves 
into the course of human history, originating great 
historical movements not otherwise to be accounted 
for. In short, it is not a case of kernel and shell. It 
is a case rather of stone fruit, like a cherry or a peach, 
from which you cannot remove the stone without fa- 
tally injuring the fruit. You may think the history 
a mere useless stone that may be cast away without 
loss. But in extracting the stone you wound the 
tender flesh, and through the wound the precious 
juice escapes. 



9* 



THE FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN 
REVELATION. 






CHAPTER V, 

THE FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN REVELATION. 

In the older apologetic, as I observed at the com- 
mencement of last chapter, prophecy takes rank with 
miracles as an evidential sign attached to a doctrinal 
revelation. In this connection stress is, of course, 
laid chiefly on the miraculous element in prophecy. 
The prophets are conceived of as foretellers of things 
to come, and their prophecies as miracles of fore- 
knowledge, giving proof that they were entitled to 
speak to men in God's name as authoritative teach- 
ers. In this evidential way of regarding prophecy 
much of what was most characteristic in the work of 
the prophets falls into the background. The great 
business of the apologist is not to find out the pro- 
phet's place and function in the history of revelation, 
and with reference to his own time, but simply to dis- 
cover as many as possible specific predictions which 
can be shown to have been accomplished in subsequent 
history. It is, obviously, a matter of indifference to 
this argument what the subject of prophecy may be. 
The particular prediction may be one analogous to 
the miracle of changing a pen into a pen-wiper, a mere 
prodigy of foreknowledge, it will still serve the pur- 
pose of revealing the presence of a supernatural ele- 



I9 4 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 

ment. Such a way of regarding prophecy degrades 
it to a level with heathen divination, and hence it 
has justly fallen into discredit with recent writers of 
unexceptionable orthodoxy. By no one has it 
been more emphatically repudiated than by the late 
Principal Fairbairn, who in his excellent work on 
Prophecy speaks of the habit of treating prophecy 
merely as a branch of the evidences, taking account 
of nothing but what it contains of the miraculous, 
as having " impoverished much of our prophetical 
literature, and stricken it with the curse of barren- 
ness." The statement is strictly true, nor does it 
tell the whole truth as to the mischief wrought by 
the narrow and one-sided view so energetically con- 
demned. The exclusively evidential use of prophecy 
exercises a most serious disturbing influence within 
the provinces of criticism and interpretation. Its 
interest being to multiply the number of remarkable 
specific predictions, its bias in all questions of date 
and authorship is to adopt, without regard to the 
state of the evidence, that view which makes the 
writing contain the largest amount of the miraculous. 
Then, as the force of the argument depends largely 
on the explicitness with which the predicted event is 
preannounced, the apologetic bias naturally inclines 
to that way of interpreting individual prophecies which 
makes them like history written before the event — 
clear, definite, unmistakable — and fosters generally a 
misconception of the prophetic style which opens the 
door to a fanatical and irrational mode of interpreting 
unfulfilled prophecy fitted to bring the whole pro- 
phetic literature into contempt — the appropriate ter- 
ritory of theological quacks, to be shunned by all 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 



195 



sensible men. In the special department of Messianic 
prophecy the tendency of the evidential school is to 
disregard entirely the historical method of interpreta- 
tion, and to adopt that view of the prophecies which 
makes them obviously and exclusively refer to Christ. 
No good can come out of this apologetic special 
pleading even to the cause in whose interest it is 
practised. Its only effect is to give such writers as 
Mr. Arnold an opportunity to turn the whole argu- 
ment into ridicule, an opportunity of which the author 
of " Literature and Dogma " has fully availed him- 
self. In his ironical patronising way he says : " It 
must be allowed that while human nature is what it 
is, the mass of men are likely to listen more to a 
teacher of righteousness, if he accompany his teach- 
ing by an exhibition of supernatural prescience. And 
what were called the ' signal predictions ' concerning 
the Christ of popular theology, as they stand in our 
Bibles, had and have undoubtedly a look of super- 
natural prescience. The employment of capital let- 
ters and other aids, such as the constant use of the 
future tense, naturally and innocently adopted by in- 
terpreters who were profoundly convinced that Chris- 
tianity needed these express predictions, and that 
they must be in the Bible, enhanced certainly this 
look ; but the look, even without these aids, was suf- 
ficiently striking."* It is a flippant caricature of the 
"Argument from Prophecy," but there is just enough 
truth in it to make one sensible of the necessity of 
forming a conception of prophecy which can be made 
subservient to the purposes of apologetic without hav- 



* Page no. 



I 9 6 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

ing recourse to the exegetical devices held up to ridi- 
cule. This accordingly is the task to which we have 
now to address ourselves, as the first step in our en- 
deavour to ascertain the function of prophecy in the 
history of revelation. 

The most outstanding feature of prophecy, then, 
to which all others must be subordinated, and by 
which all others are best understood, is its ethical 
character. The prophets were not principally fore- 
tellers, or prognosticators of future events ; and what- 
ever predictions occur in their writings, and whatever 
use can be made of these for evidential purposes, the 
raison d'etre of this remarkable class of religious 
teachers was not to supply materials for the apologist. 
The prophets were before all things preachers of 
righteousness and mercy to Israel, specially to their 
contemporaries in Israel. Any one can satisfy him- 
self of this simply by an attentive reading of the 
prophetic books, with open unprejudiced mind. Ev- 
erywhere we find these prophets, from Isaiah to Mal- 
achi, sternly reproving sin and threatening sinners 
with condign punishment ; exhorting to obedience to 
the Divine will, and promising the reward of pros- 
perity to those who do well, and striving to cheer the 
hearts of those who fear God in evil times, by draw- 
ing bright pictures of better days to come. And in 
all they say and do in fulfilment of their vocation, 
their obvious aim is to make a moral impression 
on the men among whom they live. As preachers of 
righteousness and grace they utter predictions, telling 
men what will be the reward or the penalty of their 
conduct under the government of a righteous God, 
and what good is in store for the world in connection 



FUNCTION OF PROPHEC Y IN RE VELA TION. \ gy 

with the purposes of Divine love. But in uttering 
their predictions they have in view not men living in 
ages after using these as arguments for the truth of 
revelation, but people nearer themselves, sinners and 
saints living in the same land as their neighbours and 
fellow-countrymen. They are emphatically preachers 
to their own time, and they express themselves in the 
language best fitted to impress their contemporaries, 
depicting the future in colours adapted to their circum- 
stances, so that from their style you can form a guess 
as to their age. Is the evil of the present disunion ? 
they represent the future as bringing back national 
unity and peace; is it the misrule of ungodly kings ? 
then the blessing promised is a King who shall reign 
in righteousness. Is the burden under which Israel 
groans the heavy yoke of a conqueror? the consola- 
tion offered is the advent of a time when the oppressed 
shall go free, and exercise dominion on their oppres- 
sors. Is the curse of the present captivity in a foreign 
land ? the comfort for the afflicted people is the good 
tidings of approaching restoration proclaimed by one 
crying in the wilderness, " Prepare ye the way of the 
Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our 
God." Is the heart of Israel heavy because the holy 
and beautiful house where her fathers worshipped 
God is burned with fire, and the altar and the daily 
sacrifice is taken away ? the prophet seeks to revive 
her drooping spirit by a gorgeous description of anew 
temple, where offerings shall be presented to Jehovah 
by a holy priesthood in behalf of a grateful penitent 
people. Evermore the future is described so as to 
suit the present need, and harmonize with the sur- 
roundings and the hopes and fears of the men to 



I98 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

whom the prophetic message is primarily addressed, 
and on whom it is meant to act as a source of in- 
spiration. 

This mode of speaking, this way of depicting the 
future in terms suggested by the present, is manifestly 
congenial to the ethical character I have ascribed to 
prophecy. Those who wish to influence their age 
must speak to the age in language which it can un- 
derstand, sympathize with, and be moved by. Hence 
arises a necessity for the prophet, in speaking of the 
future, to describe it, not as it shall be in all respects, 
but as those whom he addresses would wish it to be. 
On this principle our Lord acted when He promised 
to His disciples that they should sit on thrones judg- 
ing the twelve tribes of Israel. It was a way of say- 
ing: Ye shall have a place of importance in the king- 
dom of God, suited to their present ideas, and there- 
fore fitted to inspire hope. A more exact, less sen- 
suous, mode of expressing the truth would have made 
little impression on their minds. Our Lord, knowing 
that His language conveyed but a rude idea of the 
actual fact, nevertheless used it, because His aim was 
not only to predict, but to produce a moral impres- 
sion. Whether the prophets knew that the future 
would not correspond closely to their picture is an- 
other question. Probably they did not. But whether 
they did or not, it is certain in any case that their 
language is figurative and pictorial, and that their 
prophecies are far enough from answering to the de- 
scription of prophecy given by Bishop Butler, when 
he characterized it as " nothing but the history of 
events before they come to pass."* 



* " Analogy," Part II., chap. vii. 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. i 99 

Prophecy justly describable in these terms would 
certainly serve apologetic purposes excellently well. 
It would have been very gratifying to the professed 
apologist to have had at his command prophetic de- 
scriptions of the future written in such plain explicit 
realistic terms, that the correspondence between pre- 
diction and fulfilment should be self-evident and un- 
deniable. It is certain, however, that the fact for the 
most part is not so, and that many of the prophetic 
oracles are couched in such terms as almost exclude 
the possibility of literal fulfilment. From the apolo- 
getic point of view this is disappointing ; but when 
we consider the subject from the ethical standpoint 
we feel that the prophetic style is in harmony with 
the chief end of prophecy. And this suggests the 
remark that the two views of prophecy, the apolo- 
getic and the ethical, are not only distinct, but to a 
certain extent mutually exclusive. The more pro- 
phecy is fitted by its style to serve the ultimate apolo- 
getic use, the less it is fitted to serve the immediate 
parenetic purpose ; and conversely, the better it is 
fitted to make a moral impression on those to whom 
it is immediately addressed, the less likely is it to 
supply the apologist with convincing arguments 
wherewith to silence gainsayers. It is important to 
understand this law, because failure to do so may 
lead us into serious error in one or othep of two oppo- 
site directions. On the one hand, observing the non- 
correspondence between many of the prophecies and 
any events lying behind us in the course of history, 
we may with a certain school of interpreters expect a 
literal fulfilment in the future, even in cases when the 
very idea of such fulfilment is grotesque. On the 



200 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VEIA TION 

other hand, believing such literal fulfilment to be 
now impossible, and observing that no such fulfil- 
ments took place at the time when they might have 
been possible, except to a very limited and inadequate 
extent, we may rush to the conclusion of sceptical 
critics, that there is nothing supernatural in prophecy, 
and regard the prophetic oracles simply as glowing 
idealising pictures of the future drawn by men of ar- 
dent poetic temperament, very natural and very beau- 
tiful, but without any foundation in reality. At the 
present time the latter of these two errors is the one 
chiefly to be guarded against. It is specially impor- 
tant, therefore, to bear in mind that if many of the 
prophecies have not been and never will be fulfilled 
in the sense in which they would naturally be under- 
stood when they were uttered, the reason is not to be 
sought in the impossibility of supernatural knowledge, 
but in the nature of the prophetic vocation. How- 
ever real the supernatural may be, the prophets could 
not have spoken to purpose otherwise than they did ; 
therefore the fact of their speaking so cannot legiti- 
mately be cited in proof that the supernatural ele- 
ment is a chimsera. The prophetic style is undoubt- 
edly such as to make it possible for writers of natural- 
istic proclivities, with a certain measure of plausibility, 
to represent the prophetic delineation of the future as 
" a kind of fairy tale " which the prophets told them- 
selves and their fellow-countrymen for consolation 
under distressing circumstances ; very pathetic, and 
very natural, " having the rights of poetry, but having 
no pretensions to prosaic truth and reality."* There 



* So Mr. Arnold. 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 20 1 

is so much plausibility in the representation as to 
make it very difficult, if not impossible, to convince 
an unbeliever in the supernatural that he is in error. 
But by bearing duly in mind the nature of the pro- 
phetic calling, we may at least keep ourselves from 
being imposed on by naturalistic plausibilities, while 
going a considerable way in agreement with unbeliev- 
ing interpreters as to the actual characteristics of the 
prophecies. We can believe it possible that in these 
oracles a Divine supernatural element is immanent, a 
genuine vitally important message from God by the 
mouth of His prophets to us on whom the ends of the 
world are come, though, it may be, couched in words 
which, as understood by their contemporaries, and 
possibly even by themselves, were a very rude adum- 
bration of the reality. 

To those who read the prophecies only with an 
eye to apologetic or edifying uses, such a view will 
doubtless appear unsatisfactory, and those who enter- 
tain it may even seem liable to the suspicion of being 
in secret sympathy with rationalism. The fear of 
this, however, must not be permitted to arrest honest 
endeavour to ascertain by an inductive process the 
actual characteristics of Hebrew prophecy. We may 
rest assured that though the result of such an inquiry 
may be to introduce considerable modifications in the 
method of proving revelation, it will not be to rob us 
of revelation itself. The whole subject of prophecy 
needs reconsideration in order to rescue it at once 
from the sacrilegious hands of unbelief, and from the 
irrational treatment which it has often received at the 
hands of faith ; and to those who undertake this ardu- 
ous task let us give a hearty God-speed. The work 



202 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VEIA TION. 

is only just commencing, and the Church may have 
to wait long before it is accomplished. Already, how- 
ever, some things have become tolerably clear and 
gained general acceptance among believing theolo- 
gians of the new prophetic school. In common with 
theologians of the naturalistic school, like Kuenen, 
they hold what is called the organic or historical 
theory of prophecy, according to which the prophetic 
oracles were addressed to the present, were rooted in 
the present, were expressed in language suited to the 
present, and pointed to a good in the near future 
forming a counterpart to present evil, or to an evil in 
the near future which was to be the penalty of present 
and past sin. But they hold likewise, and here they 
part company with the unbelieving interpreter, that a 
large part of prophecy had a divinely intended refer- 
ence to the Christian era, that is, was pervaded by a 
more or less pronounced Messianic element. Yet 
they do not allow the Messianic aspect of prophecy 
to overshadow the immediate historical sense, but 
regard that sense as something to be ascertained irre- 
spective of the sense which we learn to put on prophecy 
in the light of the New Testament. In the words 
of a most distinguished member of the school : " It is 
only when we survey, from the standpoint of the ful- 
filment of the counsels of God in Christ Jesus, the 
whole of Old Testament prophecy and the progress 
of its historical development, that we can come to a 
full understanding of the teleological significance of 
any single prediction, but what we gain by this means 
is a determination of the relation of prophecy to its 
fulfilment, not an explanation of the contents of the 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 203 

prophecy itself."* It is held that what we do not 
learn until the period of fulfilment cannot be in the 
prophecy itself ; that the meaning first given to 
prophecy when considered in" the light of fulfilment, 
and the sense in which the prophets themselves and 
their contemporaries understood it, that is, the his- 
torical sense, must be regarded as perfectly distinct. 

Out of the organic conception of prophecy as 
advocated by Riehm and others, arises naturally the 
view that the representations of the future given by 
successive prophets are not separate fragments of one 
picture capable of being combined into a harmonious 
whole, but rather independent pictures, or to use 
another figure, successive steps in the growth of an 
organism. The opposite view is that advocated by 
theologians belonging to the older school of prophetic 
interpretation, such as Hengstenberg. Hengsten- 
berg's theory was, that revelations were made to the 
prophet in a state of ecstasy ; that he saw the future 
in a vision, that in vision he saw events of the 
remote future as well as of the near, but without any 
perspective indicating distance ; that the historical 
colouring drawn from the present was mere colour- 
ing, figurative language understood to be of no im- 
portance, so that the sense which results after the 
colouring has been rubbed off is the true meaning of 
the prophecy and of the prophet ; that while it was 
possible for any one prophet to see in vision the full 
picture of the future, each prophet described only a 
part, so that the total picture is to be got by piecing 
together all the separate parts. In opposition to this 



* Riehm, "Messianic Prophecy," pp. 6-1 



204 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

ingenious theory, it is contended by the new school 
that ecstasy was not the only or the usual condition 
of the prophet when he received revelations ; that a 
vision was not the principal medium of revelation, 
but rather thoughts already existing in the prophet's 
mind brought into distinct consciousness by the 
Spirit of God ; that the prophet's view was restricted 
to the near future, and that he expected the speedy 
accomplishment of his prophecy while remaining 
ignorant of the day and hour ; that the terms in 
which he described the future were not regarded by 
him as mere colouring, to be rubbed off in order to 
get at the essential element of the prophecy ; and 
that the successive representations of the future given 
by different prophets were each severally distinct 
wholes, the future, not a mere aspect of it, as seen by 
the individual prophet. The two theories are very 
diverse, and without deciding dogmatically between 
them I may remark that, from the co-existence of 
such widely divergent views as to the nature of 
prophecy, each supported by able advocates, it is 
evident that there is ample scope and urgent need 
for painstaking, patient investigation. To emphasize 
this fact, and to protest against premature dogma- 
tism, seems to be the chief duty of the hour, and it 
cannot be more effectually done than in the words 
of one whose own contributions to prophetical studies 
well entitle him to speak with authority. " It is,'* 
says Bertheau, " a problem of theological science, 
by a strict examination of all the phenomena con- 
nected with Old Testament prophecy, to lay the 
foundations for a doctrine as to the nature of pro- 
phecy, and to fix the general principles correspond- 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 2 0$ 

ing to the historical state of the case, according to 
which the rich and manifold expression of the pro- 
phetic spirit and the living forms of prophecy can 
be exhibited and arranged. The problem is not yet 
solved, nor will it be soon. With the words, ecstasy, 
vision of an image, with the demand to conceive the 
prophets as describers of pictures, the formula is not 
found by use of which the door may be opened to 
the hidden depths of prophecy."* 

Among the questions relating to prophecy on 
which much diversity of opinion yet obtains is that 
as to the conditional or unconditional character of 
the prophetic representations of the future. Did the 
prophets predict what they believed certainly should 
be, or only what would be in given circumstances ? 
The question is forced on us by the consideration 
that many of the prophecies as matter of fact were 
not fulfilled. What account is to be given of these 
unfulfilled prophecies ? Are we to say simply that the 
prophets in these instances were mistaken ? This 
is in effect the solution offered by the naturalistic 
school. The prophets were earnest believers in the 
moral government of God, and therefore were firmly 
persuaded that under that government every man 
and nation would be dealt with according to deserts. 
Hence they confidently predicted prosperity for all 
who did right, and ruin for all that did wrong. In 
so far as there really is a moral order in the world 
their predictions would come true, but as the moral 
order is far from perfect, — little more indeed than a 
tendency, — it was a matter of course that prophetic 



* H jahrt?iicher fur deutsche Theolagie," vol, iv., p. 607. 
10 



2o6 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 

expectations should often be falsified by events. 
The prophets in their predictions reasoned from 
premises only very partially true, and their conclu- 
sions, therefore, were as often Avrong as right.* Other 
writers, admitting the facts thus unceremoniously 
accounted for, explain them by insisting on the 
conditional character of prophecy. On this view 
all the promises of future good to Israel would have 
been fulfilled had Israel complied with the prescribed 
conditions. All prophecies relating to the chosen 
people are conditioned by the two principles : " Zion 
shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts 
with righteousness," and " there is no peace to the 
wicked." The failure of many prophecies promising 
good to Israel is sufficiently explained by the sad 
complaint, " Oh that thou hadst hearkened to My 
commandments, then had thy peace been as a river, 
and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." Had 
Israel hearkened to God's commandments, every good 
word of God spoken to her by the prophets would 
surely have come to pass.f This view is certainly 
very congenial to the ethical character of prophecy. 
It was congruous to the vocation of the prophet as a 
preacher of righteousness to his time to make the 
fulfilment of his prophecies dependent on the good 
behaviour of the people, and there can be no doubt 
that in many instances he consciously did so. No 
one who has not a pet theory to defend, like Heng- 



* So Kuenen, and, to a certain extent, Riehm, though not belong- 
ing to the naturalistic school. 

f So Bertheau in " Jahrbucher fur deutsche Theologie," vol. iv., 
p. 344- 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 



207 



stenberg, who had but one object in view, viz., to 
play the part of champion of supranaturalism, will 
dream of disputing the point. It may, however, 
very legitimately be doubted whether the theory of 
conditionality explains all the facts ; whether we may 
say without qualification that had Israel done what 
God required, all the promised blessings would have 
been bestowed on her exactly as foretold. It is at 
least a feasible suggestion, that limitation of prophetic 
vision must be taken into account in explanation of 
the non-fulfilment of such prophecies as promised to 
penitent Israel the reunion of the two kingdoms into 
one, the complete recall of the Babylonish captivity 
and the restoration of all the exiles to their own 
land, the conversion or subjection of all the surround- 
ing nations, so that the chosen people might dwell in 
safety, with no envious or malicious neighbours to 
make her afraid.* 

Whether prepared to go this length or not, all 
sober and unprejudiced students of prophecy must at 
least acknowledge the presence of a conditional ele- 
ment in the prophetic picture of the future. The 
truth seems to be, that there are two classes of pro- 
phecies, one conditional, the other unconditional, or 
conditioned only as to time and mode of accomplish- 
ment. A further fact of importance to be noted is, 
that in these two classes of prophecy, the prophet 
appears in two distinct attitudes. In the conditional 
prophecies he appears as the prophet of moral law, 
in the unconditional as the prophet of grace. The 
vocation of the prophet is not fully understood unless 



* So Riehm, "Messianic Prophecy," p. 154. 



208 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

he be regarded under this twofold aspect : as exer- 
cising a function on the one hand in relation to God 
as moral Governor, on the other in relation to God as 
the God of a gracious purpose. The prophets were 
at once preachers of righteousness, asserting the reign 
of moral law over all men ; and preachers of a gos- 
pel, proclaiming a sovereign purpose of grace that 
should certainly be fulfilled irrespective of human 
conduct, — a purpose concerning Israel in the first 
place, but not exclusively, — a purpose to bless Israel 
that she might be a blessing to the whole earth. The 
two functions, as actually exercised, were intimately 
blended together, but they are in nature distinct, and 
may be regarded apart. To the prophecies uttered 
by the prophet as the preacher of Divine grace be- 
long those distinctively denominated Messianic ; to 
the prophecies of law and righteousness belong those 
which pre-announce the destinies of nations and 
cities, such as Babylon, Egypt, Nineveh, and Tyre. 
In all the latter class of prophecies is proclaimed, 
with sublime emphasis, the eternal truth that there is 
indeed a moral order of the world, that verily there 
is a God that doeth righteousness in the earth. It is 
in this aspect of their vocation that the Hebrew pro- 
phets are an object of intense interest to such writers 
as Carlyle and Arnold, who, while making no profes- 
sion of faith in a supernatural revelation, have a firm 
belief in a Power in the world making for righteous- 
ness. Such cherish and express a sincere respect for 
those ancient preachers of eternal duty, and fearless 
denouncers of iniquity, who kept telling their con- 
temporaries of all classes that God's will must be 
done and could be disobeyed only under terrible 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 209 

penalties. They are not even unwilling to admit 
that, in their capacity of preachers of righteousness, 
the prophets uttered some remarkable predictions 
which were substantially fulfilled. Men like the He- 
brew prophets, it is acknowledged, can divine, for 
there really is a moral order of the world, and men 
who with their whole soul believe in it, and who un- 
derstand the moral phenomena of their age, may to 
a certain extent, sometimes even to a surprising ex- 
tent, read the future in the present. Thus the pre- 
dictions of doom, subsequently fulfilled, admitted to 
be genuine, are resolved into natural products of in- 
sight into, and faith in, the laws which regulate the 
moral government of mankind. Believing students 
of prophecy, while conceding that some predictions 
may be thus accounted for, deem it impossible to re- 
duce all to mere displays of sagacity, and see in cer- 
tain outstanding oracles the undeniable results of 
supernatural enlightenment, supplying materials for 
a cogent apologetic argument. The argument is com- 
petent, but after the most has been made of it, it is 
not the one to which the foremost place is due. The 
most inviting and fruitful field for the apologist is the 
region of Messianic prophecies, embracing under that 
head all those in which the pia desideria, the hopes, 
the ideals of the godly in Israel find expression, 
those, in other words, which embody what has been 
called the Hebrew Utopia. So defined they are a 
large group, endlessly varied in character, and of un- 
paralleled beauty and interest, the most remarkable 
utterances of the kind in the whole literature of man- 
kind. Believers and unbelievers alike acknowledge 
the incomparable charm of these Hebrew oracles of 



2 1 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 

faith and hope, but to very different intents. Unbe- 
lief sees in them merely fairy tales which the pro- 
phets told themselves to comfort their hearts under 
the sorrows of the present; Aberglaube, extra belief 
rendered natural if not necessary by the shortcoming 
of the moral order of the world from the ideal of a 
perfect moral government. The power that makes 
for righteousness does not make all the righteous 
happy, and all the wicked miserable. The prophets 
seeing this, and unable to reconcile themselves to the 
actual moral order as the best possible, or to be 
looked for, invented a system of compensations in 
the future in the form of a perfect Divine kingdom, 
a Messiah, and a life to come. Behold the Messianic 
prophecies ! Very beautiful, and having the rights 
and the worth of poetry, but nothing more, being 
mere added beliefs born of undying hope, through 

which — 

" Mercy gave to charm the sense of woe, 
Ideal bliss that truth could never know." 

So regards Messianic prophecy, Mr. Arnold, natu- 
rally enough from his point of view, according to 
which the one idea in the Bible is the Power making 
for righteousness. On that view the truly valuable 
part of the prophetic literature is that which asserts, 
with passionate earnestness, the reality of the moral 
order of the world. All that remains, the so-called 
Messianic element, must be relegated to the category 
of poetic invention, valuable chiefly as showing how 
deep and strong was the faith of the prophets in the 
power that worketh for righteousness. Undoubtedly, 
even on this view there is much in the prophetic 
books of perennial importance to mankind ; and, as 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 2 1 1 

I said before in connection with miracles, so I say- 
here in connection with prophecy : it may be a good 
service to the world to show what a valuable book 
the Bible will be, even when faith in the supernatural 
has finally forsaken the earth. But as the Bible is 
a very different book in its whole scope and aim, 
according as you exclude or retain the miracles, so 
is it a very different book according to the view you 
take of Messianic prophecies. If you regard these 
simply as fairy tales, then the prophets- will speak to 
you only of righteousness. If, on the other hand, 
you regard these prophecies as a system of ideals, 
shadowing forth a summum bonum destined to be 
essentially realized, then the prophets will speak to 
you of Divine grace as well as of Divine righteous- 
ness, and what they say as preachers of grace will 
no longer be regarded as mere poetic inventions, but 
as genuine oracles uttered by Divine inspiration. In 
this light does faith regard the Messianic prophecies, 
as ideals essentially realized in Christianity, and in 
these prophecies so regarded it finds not merely an 
important contribution to the argument for revela- 
tion, but a most important constituent part of revela- 
tion itself viewed as the self-manifestation of God in 
grace. 

The last observation conducts us to the proper 
subject of this chapter, viz., the function of Hebrew 
prophecy in connection with revelation. A full dis- 
cussion of this topic would require us to consider 
prophecy under a twofold aspect ; not only as related 
to the promise, but also as related to the law. The 
latter aspect having already been incidentally referred 
to, I content myself here with a few observations 



2 1 2 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 

on a single point connected therewith. One great 
service rendered by the prophets in connection with 
the law, was the assertion of the supreme importance 
of the moral element in comparison with the ritual, 
in opposition to the prevailing tendency to place the 
ritual above the ethical. What a prominent place 
the protest against this tendency held in the pro- 
phetic Avorld, is manifest from the most cursory 
perusal of the prophetic writings, which abound with 
passages whose burden is, " to obey is better than 
sacrifice." In such utterances the prophets were the 
pioneers of Christianity as the religion of the spirit ; 
and the preparers of a religious revolution whose 
issue was to be the abolition of ritualism, and the 
inbringing of the worship of the Father in spirit and 
in truth. The prophets themselves were not in con- 
scious conflict with the ritual law, but only with the 
undue importance attached to it in comparison with 
the great matters of duty as set forth in the Ten 
Words. They looked on sacrifices and religious cere- 
monial generally simply as promises to pay the ster- 
ling gold of obedience ; and what they could not 
endure was that promises should be put in place of 
performance, should be supposed to be performance. 
But while this is true, there can be little doubt that 
by their energetic protest against the superstitious 
overvaluing of ritual, the prophets were unconsciously 
heralding the advent of a time when the relation 
between God and His people should be of a purely 
spiritual character. There are even traces of a clear 
conscious insight into the truth that ritualism could 
not be the final form of religion. Perhaps the most 
distinct is to be found in Jeremiah's oracle of the 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 2 1 3 

new covenant, in which three blessings are specified 
as the characteristic marks of that covenant in com- v 
parison with the Sinaitic one : viz., God's law of duty 
written on the heart instead of on stone tablets as 
in the old covenant ; the knowledge of God so sim- 
plified that one should not need to tell his brother 
wherein it consisted ; and the full and perpetual for- 
giveness of sin. The second of the three blessings 
points, I think, to the abolition of the ritual law, and 
the reduction of religion to the simplest and purest 
spiritual service.* In making these remarks I do not 
prejudge the critical question as to when ritual took 
its final shape in a written form. It is enough for 
my purpose if, as may safely be assumed, an oral law 
relating to religious service, which men could learn 
from the priest's lips, was in existence long before 
the prophetic period, and even from the times of 
Moses. 

Passing from this topic to speak of the function of 
prophecy in relation to the promise, I remark that 
there is every reason to think that the prophets be- 
lieved in a gracious purpose of God towards Israel, 
and felt it to be an important part of their duty to 
keep Israel in mind thereof, by way of consolation 
in adversity and strengthening against temptation to 
apostasy. One broad fact, which everywhere obtrudes 
itself on our attention in reading their writings, is 
enough to settle the point. The prophet's eye is 
ever turned towards the future ; his heart seeks 
consolation, not in the memories of the past, but in 



* For a statement and defence of this view, see an article by 
me in the Expositor, vol. ix., on Jeremiah's Oracle of the New Cove- 
nant. 

IO* 



2 1 4 FUNCTION OF PROP HE CY IN RE VELA TION 

the hope of better days to come. In this respect 
the Hebrew prophet stands in marked contrast with 
the prophets and poets of other peoples. The golden 
age of Pagan poetry lies behind ; the golden age of 
Hebrew prophecy lies ahead, in the future. The 
contrast deserves consideration in connection with 
the naturalistic hypothesis, that necessity was the 
mother of prophetic hopes. Unhappy in the present, 
the spirit sought refuge in an imaginary better after- 
age. A plausible theory indeed ; but why did not 
the same law operate in all similar cases? Why 
does not necessity produce ideal hopes in all peoples 
suffering under calamities? The exceptional fact 
seems to demand an exceptional cause ; and what 
more satisfactory explanation can be given than that 
the prophets knew of a Divine purpose towards Israel, 
and through her towards the world, which they be- 
lieved would certainly be fulfilled ? or, to put it more 
definitely, that the call of Abraham and the promise 
to Abraham were for them objects of firm faith? 
If we assume this, the whole matter becomes very 
simple. Then we can understand how, while regard- 
ing themselves as ministers of righteousness, they 
should regard themselves as still more ministers of 
grace. Especially can we understand how, when on 
a review of the past history of the nation, they saw 
everywhere traces of a break-down of the Sinaitic 
covenant — the nation faithless to God, God visiting a 
faithless nation with punishment — they should turn 
with increasing predilection from law to promise, 
and find in the latter a ground of hope which they 
now despaired of finding in the former. May we 
not see the evidence of such a mental attitude in 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 



215 



the words with which Micah closes the book of his 
prophecy : " Who is a God like unto Thee, that par- 
doneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of 
the remnant of His heritage ? He retaineth not His 
anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy. He 
will turn again, He will have compassion upon us ; 
He will subdue our iniquities ; and Thou wilt cast 
all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt 
perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abra- 
ham, which Thou hast sworn unto our fathers from 
the days of old."* Naturalistic criticism tells us that 
the " truth to Jacob " and the " mercy to Abraham " 
had no objective reality, but were subjective products 
of the prophetic spirit, written into the ancient his- 
tory.f Unbelievers in the supernatural need to take 
up this position ; but on this view prophetism re 
mains a phenomenon unexplained. The course of 
Israel's religious development is, as has been well 
said, top-heavy ; the overgrowth of prophecy being 
too great for the root assigned to it in the early 
ages4 

Coming at a time when the gospel of the promise 
was needed, and when it was likely to be appreciated, 
the prophets whose oracles are recorded in the 
prophetic books rendered in various ways important 
service, not only as emphatic proclaimers, but more 
especially as interpreters, of God's gracious purpose. 
They did this, in the first place, by presenting an 
idea of God in harmony with that purpose. That 

* Mich. vii. 18-20. 

f So Pfleiderer, "Die Religion," vol. ii., pp. 337-8. Vide ex- 
tract at p. 81 of this work. 

% Smyth, "Old Faith in New Lights," p. 45. 



2 1 6 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY JN RE VELA TION 

the prophets performed a distinguished part in the 
development of Israel's idea of God is admitted on 
all sides. Naturalistic writers even exaggerate the 
service they rendered in this connection, giving them 
credit for purging the Hebrew idea of the Divine 
Being of national particularism, and promoting 
Jehovah to the honour not merely of supremacy 
among the Gods, but of sole possession of Deity ; 
in other words, for teaching the world the sublime 
doctrine of ethical monotheism. This view does 
less than justice to the ages that went before, inas- 
much as there is no good ground for the assertion 
that, previous to the prophetic era, Jehovah was 
simply a national God. The contrary is proved by 
the words of Exodus xix. 5, which Ewald calls the 
gospel of the Old Testament. " Now therefore, if 
ye will obey My. voice indeed, and keep My cove- 
nant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me 
above all people : for all the earth is Mine ; and ye 
shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy 
nation." Still it remains true that in the history of 
revelation one very special function of prophecy was 
to assert over against idolatrous tendencies, the 
monarchy of Jehovah, and to set forth with force 
and vividness the attributes of the one true God, 
crowning the edifice with the illustrious attribute of 
grace ; so giving to the world an idea of God, which 
the unknown prophet of the exile justly declares to 
be Israel's glory.* And having referred to that 
prophet, I may remark that it is not necessary to 
travel beyond his prophecies to know what manner 



* Isaiah lx. 19. " Thy God, thy glory." 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VEIA TION 2 1 J 

of a being Israel's God is. The God of those marvel- 
lous oracles is, in the first place, a Creator both 
in nature and history, in both spheres bringing into 
existence things that previously were not. He is 
the Creator of the ends of the earth, and the Maker 
of Israel ; the Maker also of great characters like 
Cyrus, who are raised up at critical periods to play 
a signal part in human affairs. He is, further, a 
Ruler who has all human destinies under His control, 
and who rules over all in righteousness, herein differ- 
ing from all the gods worshipped by other Semitic 
peoples, who, while also conceived as rulers, Baalim, 
were not rulers in righteousness. He is yet again 
not only a righteous Ruler, but the supreme Ruler, a 
Sovereign without a rival. This truth the prophet 
proclaims when he represents Jehovah as saying, " I 
form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, 
and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things " ; 
words in which some have discovered a reference to 
the religion of the Persians, the good feature of which 
was that it believed earnestly in a morally good God, 
who loved right and hated wrong, and made all good 
things ; and its weak feature that it regarded many 
things in the world as the workmanship of another 
being, who, if not the equal of the good Spirit, was at 
least independent of Him, and His perpetual rival ; 
not deeming it otherwise possible to guard from taint 
the moral character of Deity. But the brightest at- 
tribute of Israel's God remains to be mentioned. He 
is not only a just God, but a Saviour ; not only a 
Power making for righteousness, but a beneficent 
Being who deals not with men after their sins, who, 
in sovereign love, forms and executes gracious pur- 



2 1 8 FUNCTION OF PROP HE CY IN RE VELA TI.ON. 

poses, and who illustrated this attribute of His char- 
acter in the election of Israel, and in His whole 
dealings with Israel in the course of her history down 
to the date of her captivity in Babylon ; and was 
about to illustrate it anew by a second great act of 
deliverance. And not only is He a Saviour for Israel, 
but for the whole world. Israel has been chosen to 
be a missionary of the true religion to the whole earth, 
to be a light to the Gentiles, teaching them how to 
think of God, and bringing to them the joy of God's 
salvation. " Look unto Me," saith the God of this 
prophecy, " and be ye saved all the ends of the earth, 
for I am God, and there is none else." Jehovah is 
not the God of the Jews only, but of the Gentiles 
also ; therefore He saith, " Behold Me, behold Me," 
unto nations that had not hitherto been called by His 
name. 

Here surely was a sublime conception of Deity in 
which Israel might legitimately boast ! It is the 
glory of the Hebrew prophets to have given adequate 
expression to Israel's faith. This is honour enough, 
without claiming for them the credit of originating 
the idea. This they certainly did not do. The pro- 
phets did not create Israel's God, neither did Israel 
herself create Him. On the contrary, Israel was 
created, formed into a peculiar people by her God, 
and taught the knowledge of His character by her 
marvellous history. God gave to Israel that lofty 
idea of Himself; gave it not by abstract statements 
of theological truth, but above all by deeds, by the 
call of Abraham, by the events connected with the 
deliverance out of Egypt, and the settlement in 
Canaan, by the guidance of Israel's history through 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN REVELATION. 



219 



many crises in subsequent ages. The idea was the 
reflection of a character manifested in a continuous 
course of action in the evolution of a gracious pur- 
pose. But for this Divine action, not the most gifted 
of Israel's sons, not even the prophets themselves, 
had been able to form such a lofty idea of God as we 
find in the prophetic writings, and especially in those 
of the later Isaiah, and of Hosea the prophet of Di- 
vine love. The idea was not an invention, but a reve- 
lation made gradually through history, and reaching 
its full-orbed lustre in the prophetic epoch. I forget 
not that the prophets were inspired ; but their inspira- 
tion did not enable them to originate a new idea of 
God. It rather assisted them to read aright the his- 
torical revelation of the Divine name and nature. 

A second service rendered by the prophets as min- 
isters of the promise was the proclamation of the 
truth, so apt to be hidden from Israel's view by her 
election, that in that promise all nations had an in- 
terest. Universalism, the sense of the solidarity of 
mankind, the conviction that, in spite of all appear- 
ances to the contrary, God cared for all peoples, and 
would ultimately make them all partakers of the bless- 
ings of His grace, is, by general acknowledgment, one 
of the most outstanding and striking characteristics 
of the prophetic system of thought. In the judgment 
of naturalistic criticism, this universalism is a pro- 
phetic discovery or invention ; to one who believes 
in a revelation of grace, it is simply an emphatic 
recognition of a truth underlying Israel's vocation 
from the first. The originality of the prophets here 
lies not in the discovery of an absolutely new truth, 
but in the energy with which they grasped, and the 



220 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 

enthusiasm with which they expressed, an old com- 
paratively overlooked one ; and in doing this they 
contributed very materially to the better compre- 
hension of God's gracious purpose. For it is beyond 
question, as I have already hinted, that the election 
of Israel, her vocation to be a peculiar people, in 
proportion as it was earnestly believed in, would tend 
to foster the conceit that the chosen race had a mono- 
poly of Divine favour ; that, in fact, such a monopoly 
was the very meaning of the election. It would be 
difficult for members of the peculiar people to under- 
stand that election was simply a method, whereby 
one was being trained to bless the many. Hence one 
of the tasks devolving on the few to whom was re- 
vealed the secret of the Lord, would be to teach the 
chosen people this lesson, which they were so slow 
to understand, and to remind them of the mystery 
of love to the Gentiles hid in the Divine bosom. 
This task prophets and psalmists faithfully performed, 
as is witnessed by beautiful lyrics like the sixty- 
seventh and eighty-seventh Psalms, and by many a 
golden oracle to be found scattered like gems over 
the pages of the prophetic literature. As a fruit of 
the same ministry of witnessing to the catholicity of 
God's gracious purpose, we may regard some other 
portions of the Old Testament, in which one judging 
of canonicity by the narrow test of edification might 
have difficulty in discovering any claim to form a 
part of the sacred collection ; the book of Job for 
example. That book has little to teach us ; it is re- 
markable for darkness rather than for light ; we see in 
it only certain non-Israelitish men engaged in a com- 
paratively fruitless discussion on the ways of Divine 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 2 2 1 

providence. But if the test of canonicity be, as surely 
it ought to be, subserviency to the chief end of revela- 
tion, then the right of the book of Job to a place in 
the canon cannot reasonably be disputed. For one 
canonical function, at least, the book certainly does 
perform, that, viz., of bearing witness to God's interest 
in men without the pale of the elect nation. A simi- 
lar observation may be made with reference to the 
whole chokmah. literature, the humanistic character of 
which, evinced by the absence of all distinctively Is- 
raelitish reference, may seem at first sight to make its 
presence in the Hebrew canon an anomaly. The hu- 
manism of the chokmah literature is the very ground 
of its claim to be there, and the very essence of its 
canonical function, serving, as it does, to remind the 
chosen people that God was not their God only, to 
the exclusion of all the rest of the world. On similar 
grounds we can regard with equanimity critical dis- 
cussions respecting the literary character of such a 
book as that of the prophet Jonah. Whether it be 
history, or whether it be parable, that book bears wit- 
ness to the catholicity of Divine grace, and in per- 
forming that important canonical function, it fully 
vindicates its title to a place in the literature of reve- 
lation. 

The greatest service rendered by the prophets, as 
ministers of the promise, remains to be mentioned. 
It consisted in conveying an idea of the good to be 
brought to Israel, and to the world, by the final ful- 
filment of God's gracious purpose. The oracles in 
which the nature of the summum bonum is foreshad- 
owed, constitute together, as already said, what are 
called the Messianic prophecies, the name being in 



222 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

strictness applicable to those prophecies only in which 
the hopes of the future are made to centre in a Per- 
son whose sublime mission it should be to satisfy the 
spiritual longings of humanity, but legitimately and 
conveniently applied also to all prophecies descriptive 
of the benefits to be ushered in by the Messianic age. 
These prophecies are very various in their character, 
and exhibit the ideal good under almost every con- 
ceivable point of view ; at least under every point of 
view naturally suggested by the history and the in- 
stitutions of the chosen people. The promise to 
Abraham that his seed should bring blessing to all 
nations supplied one ready starting-point, and sug- 
gested the idea of a world-wide commonwealth, having 
its centre in Zion, and for its metropolis Jerusalem, 
and presenting the goodly spectacle of a universal 
brotherhood, and a catholic Church worshipping One 
God made known to the ends of the earth by the mis- 
sionary activity of Israel. Such is the picture of the 
golden age presented in the psalms above referred to, 
and in the oracle of the mountain of the Lord's house? 
and in the magnificent description of the latter-day 
glory, in the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah. Other stems 
upon which the Messianic hope could be grafted were 
the institutions of the priesthood and* the kingship. 
Both these institutions might legitimately be brought 
into connection with the gracious purpose of God 
towards Israel. For the elect nation, like every other 
nation, needed organisation, and for its well-being as 
a state required priests to transact for it in things per- 
taining to God, and kings to exercise over it just gov- 



* Isa. ii. i ; Micah 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN REVEIA TION 



223 



ernment as the visible representatives of the invisible 
King Jehovah. The prophets recognised the legiti- 
macy of both offices, though they used great freedom 
in criticising the manner in which priestly and kingly 
functions were performed by many occupants of office. 
They could therefore, without impropriety or incon- 
sistency, introduce the ideals of a perfect king and a 
perfect priest into their picture of the golden age, and 
the shortcomings of actual kings and priests made 
such ideals very welcome. Hence we find many of 
the prophecies take the form of predictions of the ad- 
vent of a King who should reign in righteousness, and 
confer upon an oppressed and downtrodden people all 
the blessings of good government. As a type of this 
class may be cited the oracle concerning the rod out 
of the stem of Jesse* In that prophecy the Messianic 
King is connected with the royal house of David. 
This, as is weH known, is a frequently recurring feature 
in the prophecies in which the ideal takes the form 
of a king. The reason is, partly that David was the 
nearest historical approximation to the ideal of a the- 
ocratic king, and partly that he had received a prom- 
ise that his seed should exercise perpetual dominion 
in Israel.f 

There are prophecies of a perfect priest as well as 
of a perfect king. These may be considered to have 
their root in the Levitical priesthood, though some of 
them might conceivably be brought under the cate- 
gory of the Messianic kingship, the priestly office of 



* Isa. xi. 

\ On the reality of this Promise, vide " Old Testament Prophecy" ; 
the Warburton Lectures for 1876-1880. By Rev. Stanley Leathes, 
D.D. Lectures v. and vi. 



224 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

Messiah being regarded as an attribute belonging to 
Him as a. King. In this view the theocratic king is 
not only the representative of the invisible ruler, but 
the representative of the people before God. As Is- 
rael was a kingdom of priests, He in whom the nation 
culminated might not inappropriately be endowed 
with the highest priestly honours. On this principle 
the remarkable oracle concerning the Melchisedec 
priesthood has been interpreted as referring in the 
first place to one of Israel's historical kings.* One 
advantage resulting from this view is, that when the 
priesthood is included under the kinghood, there is 
less risk of the Messianic prophecies being supposed 
to refer to different persons ; the two ideals may then 
most naturally be conceived as meeting in one person. 
But there certainly are some prophecies in which the 
priestly order appears distinct from the kingly. This 
holds true especially of the latest prophecies, e.g., 
those in Zechariah. There, beside Zerubbabel, a de- 
scendant of David, stands the high priest Joshua, in a 
position of honour altogether novel ; and, correspond- 
ing to that position, Messiah is represented as a Priest 
in whom the ideal of that sacred office is realized, in 
the oracle of the Branch.^ In this prophecy it re- 
mains doubtful whether the Messianic priest and the 
Messianic king are, in the prophet's mind, one person 
or distinct. 

We have thus in the prophetic writings, prophecies 
foreshadowing an ideal missionary activity, an ideal 
kingship, and an ideal priesthood, with all that should 
accompany these good things, a universal religion, a 



* E.g., by Riehm, vide " Messianic Prophecy," pp. 71-3. 
\ Zech. vi. 



FUNCTION OF PROPHEC Y IN RE VELA TION. 2 2$ 

kingdom of God, a blessed fellowship between God 
and man. Whether the first of these ideals, the pro- 
phetic, refers to an individual or to a community, 
and whether the second and third, the kingly and 
priestly, refer to two persons or to one only, are ques- 
tions that may legitimately be asked ; but all three 
ideals enter into the prophetic representation of the 
future. They are not all to be met with in each of 
the prophets. One gives one, another another, and 
the close relation between prophecy and history ap- 
pears in the correspondence between the kind of 
ideal presented by a particular prophet, and the cir- 
cumstances of the Hebrew nation when he prophe- 
sied. The prophets of the Assyrian period think of 
the Messiah as a king, finding in Him one who should 
be able to cope with the great monarchs of the earth. 
In the prophecies forming the second part of the 
book of Isaiah, which, whether written at the time of 
the exile, were at all events written for that time, 
there is no word of a Messianic king. The " servant 
of God " of these prophecies is a prophet, whose vo- 
cation is to give light to the Gentiles, and who in the 
discharge of his office is destined to suffer much at 
the hands of an unbelieving world. After the exile, 
when the work of engrossing interest was the rebuild- 
ing of the temple and the restoration of the temple- 
worship, the priestly office came to the forefront, and 
the Messianic ideal took the form of a priest sitting 
on a throne, and exercising influence with God in be- 
half of the people. 

But while the Hebrew prophets, according to their 
varying temperaments and circumstances and the 
diverse revelations made to them, present the Mes- 



226 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

sianic hope under different aspects, they all concur in 
making on our mind one general impression. With 
one voice they say : the present form of religion and 
of the kingdom of God is not the perfect or the final 
one. The perfect is yet to come ; all that has been 
or is, even in Israel — priesthood, kinghood, religious 
ritual — is imperfect and therefore transient. The 
perfect, the religion of the spirit, the true priesthood 
and kinghood are in the future. In one other thing 
all agree. They not only say, the Perfect is yet to 
come, but they say, the Perfect shall come ; the ideal 
shall be realized. These prophecies of ours are not 
mere dreams, mere idle tales which we tell ourselves 
and our brethren to amuse our sad minds. They are 
the word of the Lord which endureth for ever, and 
as such they must be fulfilled. If the Scriptures con- 
tain the record of a veritable revelation, this prophetic 
faith ought to be true. For just at this point a 
marked difference ought to be observable between 
ethnic and revealed religion. The ideals of Pagan 
religions may, to a large extent, be poetic dreams, 
never destined to be realized ; but the ideals of re- 
vealed religion ought to be realized, and by their 
fulfilment be proved to be no dreams of the prophet's 
heart, but revelations from heaven. That these 
ideals should be enclosed in temporary husks, destined 
to be cast aside when the era of fulfilment comes, is 
not a matter to cause surprise. We will not expect 
every word of the prophet to be fulfilled to the let- 
ter ; neither will we lay too much stress on remark- 
able individual details, looking for exact correspond- 
ence between these and events occurring in the era 
of fulfilment. We will simply ask : have the pro- 



FUNCTION OF PROPHEC V IN RE VELA TION. 2 2J 

phetic expectations been realized in the main, or have 
they not? Have the new covenant, and the spiritual 
worship, and the universal religion, and the Divine 
Prophet, Priest, and King come, or do we still look 
for them, and look for them in vain ? 

The short and simple creed of the apostolic Church, 
that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, is an affirmative 
answer to the question, to the effect that Jesus is the 
Messiah of Old Testament prophecy, and that in 
Him and in the religion which He founded all the 
ancient hopes of the Hebrew nation were essentially 
fulfilled. This answer the catholic Church in every 
age has endorsed, and the cordial acceptance thereof 
is one of the marks by which the position of faith is 
sharply distinguished from that of unbelief. In con- 
fessing this truth all believing theologians are at one ; 
and the fact is to be emphasised in view of the differ- 
ences of opinion which prevail among them as to the 
best method of proving the doctrine accepted in com- 
mon. On this latter point two widely contrasted 
views are held. One lays the stress of the argument 
on the remarkable special predictions concerning the 
Messiah, such as those relating to the birth from a 
virgin and the rising up of the Messianic Deliverer 
out of Bethlehem. On the other view, the wisest 
method of proof is to begin with the great general 
outlines of Messianic prophecy, with the aim of 
showing that in Christ Old Testament ideals are 
gathered up in a centre and in the highest sense 
realized, reserving specialties for the conclusion, and 
using them thus, not as the foundation, but as the 
copestone of the edifice of faith. This view naturally 
commends itself to those who are convinced that 



228 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

every one of the special predictions had a primary- 
reference to some historical event or character much 
nearer the prophet's time ; an opinion which, as held 
by believing theologians, is not meant to deny that 
these predictions had also a divinely intended refer- 
ence to Jesus Christ, which, from a doctrinal point of 
view, may be the more important. But this latter 
position, as held by the school of interpreters I now 
speak of, is the effect, not the ground of faith. 
Having satisfied themselves on other grounds that 
in Jesus Messianic prophecy is fulfilled, they are pre- 
pared to recognise a divinely ordered teleology imma- 
nent in " all prophetic utterances, a teleology whereof 
the prophets themselves were, to a great extent, un- 
conscious. Apart from the question of interpretation, 
this change of front seems best fitted to serve the 
present interests of apologetic. For unbelief finds it 
much easier to dispose of the individual predictions 
on which the older apologists rested their case, than 
to explain away the correspondence between Chris- 
tianity and Hebrew prophecy in the great general 
outlines. The distinction between primary and 
secondary prophecies — that is, between those whose 
first and perhaps exclusive reference is Messianic, and 
those in which a primary reference other than 
Messianic cannot be denied, and only a secondary 
reference to Messiah can be maintained — this distinc- 
tion is very unstable and unsatisfactory. The dis- 
tinction of course implies that only the primary 
prophecies can be the basis of faith ; and the argu- 
ment, as between the apologist and his opponent, 
resolves itself into a wrangle about individual pro- 
phecies and their proper interpretation. How un- 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 2 2Q 

satisfactory the issue of this debate is likely to be we 
may learn from these words of Mr. Arnold : " Who 
will dispute that it more and more becomes known 
that these prophecies cannot stand as we have 
here given them? .... That the passage from Gen- 
esis with its mysterious Shiloh, and the gathering of 
the people to Him, is rightly to be rendered as 
follows : ' The pre-eminence shall not depart from 
Judah, so long as the people resort to Shiloh (the 
national sanctuary before Jerusalem was won), and 
the nations (the heathen Canaanites) shall obey 
him.'"* This one instance may suffice as a sample 
of the way in which the Messianic reference is elimi- 
nated. I do not mean to say that the interpretation 
given is right, and that the apologist must yield the 
point. There is more probably in many individual 
prophecies than the children of the Zeitgeist find. 
But if not right, Mr. Arnold's interpretation is at 
least plausible ; and of all similar cases plausibility 
may be predicated to such an extent as leaves the 
unbelieving interpreter with a very complacent con- 
viction that he has truth on his side. It is surely 
therefore wise to give prominence to the view that 
even if all the remarkable special predictions and so- 
called primary prophecies were explained away one 
by one, there would still remain ample solid ground 
on which to construct a weightier, if less simple argu- 
ment, tending to show that in Christianity we have 
the glorious fulfilment of a Divine purpose of grace, 
whereof predictive intimations and foreshadowings 



*" Literature and Dogma," pp. m-114. 
11 



230 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION, 



are to be found in every page of Hebrew prophecy, 
in every glowing picture of the good time coming. 

That in Jesus were fulfilled the best aspirations 
and hope of the Hebrew race is, to a certain extent, 
admitted by naturalistic critics ; but in a way which 
utterly fails to do justice to the facts. Here, also, 
Mr. Arnold may be taken as a representative man. 
In his opinion the fusing together of the various 
ideals of Old Testament prophecy was a procedure 
warranted neither by strict interpretation of the texts, 
nor by any real Divine purpose, but was simply an 
original stroke of genius on the part of Jesus, a happy 
audacity. This, however, it certainly was. The bright 
idea struck Him to take the suffering servant of later 
Isaiah and make him one with the Messianic King 
who was to come forth out of Jesse's roots, and with 
the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, 
and so to set Himself to found a kingdom, not by 
might nor by power, but by the force of truth and of 
meekness and patient love. And the idea succeeded, 
and success justified the audacity and the innovation. 
Attempts at such a combination of apparently incom- 
patible ideals had been made before, which is not 
surprising, " for the true line of Israel's progress lay 
through it. But not he who tries makes an epoch, 
but he who effects, and the identification which was 
needed Jesus effected."* 

This is plausible, but not satisfactory. It cannot 
content any thoughtful, serious man, no matter what 
philosophical school he belongs to, to be told that 
Christ's success was a happy hit, and His relation to 



* •• Literature and Dogma/' p, 96. 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 23 1 

the Old Testament a self-constituted and arbitrary 
one. One cannot help thinking that the happy 
combination of Old Testament ideals in Christ's con- 
sciousness was grounded on the eternal truth of 
things, and that His success was the fulfilment of a 
purpose of the living God, shadowed forth in those 
prophetic ideals. As to the former point, it is by 
no means clear that the prophets themselves had no 
suspicion of the truth that the ideals might meet in 
one person.* But grant they had not, and that for 
want of such insight they thought of their ideals as 
mutually exclusive ; may we not regard the combina- 
tion of these in the consciousness of Christ as the 
result of a more than prophetic knowledge, and the 
marvellous success of His work, in spite of its entire 
contrariety to the spirit of the world, as the experi- 
mental proof that the combination was not only 
legitimate, but divinely intended ? Have we not, in 
fact, in Christ not only the fulfilment of the pro- 
phecies, but the filling up of them, the supplement 
of their deficiency, the last and highest prophecy as 
well as the realization of all prophecies that went 
before, gathering their scattered rays into a focus, 
and yielding a Messiah not one-sided, but all-sided, 
and proving Him to be the true Messiah just by the 
union in Him of all prophetic ideals ? 

Such is the view of the fulfilment of Messianic 
prophecy which commends itself to those in our day 
who, while firmly believing with the Church of all 
ages that Jesus is the God-given Christ in whom His 
promises are Yea and Amen, nevertheless feel that 



* Vide Isa. liii. ; specially ver. 12. 



232 FUNCTION OF PROPHEC Y IN RE VELA TION 

modification of the old argument is demanded by- 
modern criticism and exegesis. They see in Christ 
and Christianity the flower and fruit, and in ancient 
prophecy the bud. They see in Jesus of Nazareth 
and His religion all Old Testament religious ideals 
realized. Not only so, they see in Christianity more 
than they believe it possible to see in Hebrew pro- 
phecy, apart from the light shed on it by fulfilment. 
They not only find in prophecy an evidence of 
Christ's Divine mission, but they find in Christ a key 
to the understanding of prophecy, a key to the 
riddle of the ancient oracles, a clear unfolding of 
what they dimly hinted at. Christianity contains for 
them all that the prophets taught, and more, "just as 
the living plant contains the life, and more than the 
life, of the seed ; just as the day contains the light 
of dawn and more light. Prophecy is the seed, the 
twilight glow ; Christianity is the life, the full day."* 
According to this view Christ is, in the first instance, 
His own witness ; and instead of being proved con- 
clusively by prophecy, interpreted apart from the 
light of the Christian era, to be the Christ, He first 
enables those who believe in Him to understand 
aright the prophecies, and to see in the correspond- 
ence of these, rightly understood, and His personal 
character and history, the evidence of a Divine pur- 
pose running through the previous ages and finding 
its fulfilment in Him. And such, indeed, to a great 
extent, is the actual state of the case. The pro- 



* Adeney, "The Hebrew Utopia," a Study of Messianic Pro- 
phecy, p. 354. An excellent book, by one belonging to the 
modern school of apologists whose position I have attempted to 
indicate. 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 233 

phecies are not such, that by the mere citation of 
them you can shut a man up to the belief that Jesus 
of Nazareth is the Christ. They are rather such that 
when, on other grounds, a man is disposed to receive 
Jesus as the Lord and Saviour, what in them was 
enigmatical before, becomes luminous with meaning. 
The proof from prophecy is not mathematically strin- 
gent ; a mind not spiritually prepared to feel its force 
can evade it. For special predictions other fulfilments 
than those supplied in the life of our Lord can be 
sought out ; and with reference to general prophecies 
embodying the Messianic ideals, the position can be 
plausibly taken up, that the ideals were not conceived 
by the prophets as meeting in one person, could not 
indeed, being in their nature incompatible. How far 
prophecy is from being irresistible evidence, is suffi- 
ciently apparent from the reception actually given to 
Jesus by His contemporaries ; who, though familiar 
with the letter of the Hebrew Scriptures, scouted His 
claim to be the Messiah as altogether preposterous. 
Even in the case of the few who believed in Him, 
faith was not the effect of the proof from prophecy. 
Believers did not first study the prophecies and then 
come to Jesus as disciples ; they first came to Jesus, 
and then learnt how to interpret the prophecies. The 
proper interpretation of prophecy was not the cause, 
but the effect of their faith. And the same thing 
holds good in the experience of Christians generally. 
" Prophecy serveth not for them that believe not, but 
for them which believe."* We come to Christ, drawn 



* " It must, however, not be forgotten that the office of prophecy 
is not to convert, but to convince ; not to lay the foundation, but to 
confirm those in whom it has already been laid ; for we are told 



234 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 



by His own native attractions, and we learn in His 
school how to read the Old Testament. It does not 
follow from this that the prophetic argument is of no 
value. Prophecy does indeed speak first to faith, but 
then its deeper meaning is revealed from faith to the 
production of higher, stronger faith. Prophecy may 
fail to lead an unbelieving man to Christ ; but when 
one has become a believer, he is confirmed in his faith 
by the inner harmony between the spirit of prophecy 
and the doctrine of Christ. And, as his faith grows 
in intelligence, his sense of the extent to which the 
testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy becomes 
deepened. At first he may be impressed only by the 
correspondence between a few of the broad features 
of prophecy and the history of Christ and Christian- 
ity: the new covenant of Jeremiah's oracle, the spir- 
itual religion insisted on by all the prophets, the ex- 
tension of the true religion to all nations, the mission 
of " the servant of Jehovah " as the herald of the new 
era, and his sufferings in the performance of the duties 



on sufficiently high authority, that prophecy serveth not for them that 
believe not, but for them which believe. Let us not seek, therefore, 
to make prophecy, or the stud)'- of prophecy, do a work for which 
perhaps it was not designed. Let us not endeavour to make it 
sustain or support the whole superstructure of the Christian fabric. 
That it is one of the converging evidences of the Christian faith we 
are only too thankful to remember. Let it not be supposed that it 
is the only one, and let us not reason as if it were. Christianity is 
an historic religion, and its central weight rests upon a small group 
of facts, those, for instance, which are gathered together in the 
Apostles' Creed. If the main facts of the Christian creed are not 
accepted, it is utterly useless to appeal to prophecy. If we do not 
accept the verdict of history, we shall certainly reject the testimony 
of that which claims to have anticipated history." — Stanley 
Leathes' Warburton Lectures, pp. io, II. 



FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION 2 $$ 

of his high calling. The spirit of prophecy may thus 
mean, to begin with, the best things, the choice pas- 
sages in the prophetic writings, containing anticipa- 
tions of the Christian religion. But by-and-by it 
comes to mean much more than this — even the soul 
animating the prophetic oracles from beginning to 
end ; not merely the flower, but the sap which per- 
vades the whole plant ; not merely a few outstanding 
passages, but the drift and tendency of the entire 
literature. The whole Old Testament now appears 
an organism of which Christ is the final cause. When 
this position is reached, one can afford to regard with 
great equanimity discussions as to the meaning of 
particular predictions, because he understands that 
" in the argument from prophecy we have to do- with 
a forest, not with a single bough or a basket of leaves ; 
with the whole trend of a coast, not with the single 
headlands or inlets of the sea ; with a zone of con- 
stellations, not with scattered stars."* And yet, just 
on that account, he can now believe that even these 
special predictions for which unbelieving criticism 
thinks it has discovered a non-Messianic interpreta- 
tion, have a divinely intended reference to Christ. 
The remarkable correspondences between some of 
these predictions and events in the life of Christ, 
which at first may have seemed purely accidental and 
surprising, appear now as natural as the correspond- 
ence which subsists between the structure of an or- 
ganism and its environment, or between the features 
of a son and those of his father. In like manner that 
the history of Israel, the experiences of individual 



* Smyth, " Old Faith in New Lights," p. 248. 



236 FUNCTION OF PROPHECY IN RE VELA TION. 

members of the chosen race, and the Levitical insti- 
tutions, should be foreshadowings of the good things 
to come with Christ, appears from the viewpoint of 
faith not at all incredible. When we have once ac- 
cepted the doctrine that in Christ was fulfilled a grand 
redemptive purpose of God for which all previous 
history was a preparation, we cannot have any diffi- 
culty in believing that a Divine teleology was imma- 
nent in all the outstanding features of Israel's eventual 
story : in her religious services, in the lives of her bes,t 
kings, in prophetic utterances referring primarily to 
events and circumstances connected with the prophet's 
own time. Typical meanings of ritual institutions 
and double senses of prophecies are doubtless myste- 
rious things, which, in the hands of unwise interpre- 
ters, may easily degenerate into the magical and ab- 
surd ; but the radical objection of unbelief after all is 
not to these, but to that which they presuppose, a 
Divine purpose of grace cherished from the earliest 
ages, never lost sight of, gradually evolved in the 
course of time, and finally reaching its consummation 
in Jesus Christ. To none but those who doubt the 
purpose is the Messianic reference of the whole Old 
Testament a serious stumbling-block. 



THE DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF 
REVELATION. 



ii s 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVE- 
LATION. 

In the first chapter we saw that two diametrically 
opposed opinions concerning revelation have been 
entertained : the one, that it is wholly doctrinal; the 
other, that it has nothing to do with doctrine. The 
truth lies between these extremes. Revelation, 
though not in the first instance doctrinal, neverthe- 
less has a doctrinal significance which was unfolded 
with increasing clearness as the process of revelation 
advanced towards its consummation. And not only 
does it issue in doctrine ; it presupposes doctrine. 
The tree cff revelation has a speculative root, as well 
as a foliage and fruitage of positive truth. Every 
religion has its own way of looking at God, man, and 
the world ; in other words, reflectively or instinctively 
every religion has its characteristic theory of the uni- 
verse. Christianity is no exception. As the religion 
of redemption it is anything rather than speculative ; 
a fact, not a theory ; nevertheless, it presupposes cer- 
tain views concerning the great subjects of specula- 
tion, which no one can help cherishing who believes 
in a revelation of grace, and which can be deduced, 
h priori, from the Divine fact given to faith. If 
Christianity be true, if it be indeed the case that God 



2 4 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 

has revealed Himself in history as the God of grace, 
bringing His love to bear as a redemptive force on the 
sins of mankind, then certain inferences follow con- 
cerning God, and concerning the object of His loving 
care. These speculative presuppositions of the relig- 
ion of redemption, though not formally taught, are 
tacitly assumed and everywhere implied in the Script- 
ures, and may be gathered therefrom by inductive 
inquiry. But even without consulting the Scriptures 
we can determine for ourselves the speculative impli- 
cates of revelation, so far at least as to be able to an- 
swer the question, How does the Christian theory of 
the universe differ from that of Pantheism, or of Pa- 
ganism, or of Deism, or of Materialism ? My chief aim 
in this closing chapter, is to vindicate the apostolic 
assertion that the Bible is profitable for doctrine, that 
it possesses value not merely as a means of moral and 
religious edification, but moreover as an aid towards 
determining the didactic significance of the central 
fact of revelation. But it may be a useful introduc- 
tion to the discussion of this thesis, to consider 
briefly what we can learn for ourselves from the bare 
idea of revelation as the self-manifestation of God 
in grace, or of Christianity as the religion of redemp- 
tion* 

Among the self-evident or demonstrable presup- 
positions of Christianity are the following : — 

I. That God is an ethical Personality. The God 
who reveals Himself as a God of grace cherishes and 
executes a purpose of love. But to cherish a purpose 
and to love are acts of a Personal Being. 



* On this subject the reader may consult Delitzsch, " System der 
christliche Apologetik." 



D OCTRINA L SIGNIFICA NCE OF RE VELA T/OAT. 24 1 

2. That man also is a moral Personality, and occu- 
pies a most important place in the universe. He is 
the object of God's care ; God is mindful of him ; God 
seeks his love ; has for His aim in redemption to es- 
tablish a fellowship between man and Himself. Man, 
therefore, must be a person and not a thing, for there 
can be no fellowship between things, or between a 
person and a thing, but only between persons.* And 
as a moral personality man is not merely a part of the 
world, but stands above the world, supernatural in 
his being, and possessing the high dignity of a son of 
God, a dignity which he retains even amid his moral 
degradation, because even then he is an object of Di- 
vine care. 

3. That sin is a reality for God ; in other words, 
that God is a Holy Being. All slight, minimizing, 
apologetic, optimistic conceptions of sin as a triviality, 
an infirmity, a necessity, or as the negative side of 
good — " good in the making " — are incompatible with 
honest faith in an economy of redemption. Both the 
theology and the anthropology of this faith exclude 
such thoughts. Moral distinctions cannot, like binary 
stars to the unassisted eye of man, be invisible to the 
eye of a God who has manifested Himself in history 
as a moral physician. God does not attempt the im- 
possible or , the unnecessary ; therefore sin can be 
neither a fatality nor a trifle to Him. Then the place 
which faith assigns to man in the universe equally for- 
bids such slighting thoughts of his moral shortcom- 
ings. To take a genial view of sin may appear hu- 
mane, but it is not respectful to the sinner. It is to 



* Delitzsch pithily remarks that there can be no fellowship be- 
tween God and the mountains. 



242 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



treat human nature with contempt, to regard man as 
a being so weak that it is vain to expect virtue from 
him ; as a victim of necessity who only deludes him- 
self when he imagines he is free ; as a thing, not a 
person ; an animal, not a rational being. 

4. That God is the Maker of the world, the 
Creator of matter not less than the Father of our 
spirits. In the Pagan theory of the universe, matter 
is eternal, and in a sense independent of God. This 
view the believer in a religion of redemption cannot 
accept, for more than one reason. First, because it 
compromises God's character as personal, and His 
position as the supreme. Personality demands that 
God should be independent of the world, and supre- 
macy demands that the world should be dependent 
on Him. The two demands are satisfied only by the 
doctrine of creation as involving a beginning of the 
world. If we suppose the raw material of the world, 
the v\rf y to have been eternal, God may still be inde- 
pendent of the world, but He cannot be supreme, for 
the world exists independently of Him. He is not 
in that case the Creator of the world, but only the 
shaper of chaos into a world of order, a cosmos. If, 
on the other hand, we assume an eternal process of 
creation, so excluding the idea of a pre-existing un- 
created vhrf, then we save the Divine supremacy at 
the cost of Divine independence. Creation then be- 
comes a process of necessary emanation, excluding 
freedom, and God becomes confounded with the uni- 
verse as the original ground out of which all being 
by an incessant and necessary process flows, the natura 
naturans of Spinoza's system. The alternatives be- 
fore us are Manichsean dualism or Pantheism. God 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 243 

is either one of two, or He is not even one ; He has 
not even the privilege which we enjoy of being an 
independent personality, a whole over against the 
world ; but is either a part of the world, or the world 
itself under a certain aspect. But a still stronger 
reason for the doctrine of creation is to be found in 
the necessity for excluding the notion that matter is 
the source of moral evil, as incompatible with faith 
in redemption. If matter be the cause of sin, as 
Greek philosophy taught, then redemption, as Celsus 
justly held, is impossible. The only possible redeemer 
in that case is Death. This Pagan doctrine, therefore, 
must be eliminated if redemption is not to be made 
void ; and the most effectual way to neutralize it is 
to believe that matter is God's creation, and therefore 
good, that the Redeemer of man's soul is also the 
maker of his body, and that, therefore, the latter, so 
far from being the source of inevitable sin, is itself 
capable of redemption. This, therefore, the believer 
in a revelation cf grace firmly holds as an essential 
part of his creed. 

The foregoing are amongst the more obvious ele- 
ments of the Christian theory of the universe. Less 
certain, yet equally congenial to the central truth of 
faith, are those which follow. 

5. There is a close connection between the moral 
evil in the world, and the physical. What the precise 
connection is it is rather difficult to determine. It 
may be hazardous to affirm that physical evil univer- 
sally is the God-appointed penalty of moral evil. 
Schleiermacher lays down the position that the col- 
lective evil in the world is to be regarded as penalty 
of sin, social evil directly, natural evil indirectly. The 



244 D0C TRINA L SIGNIFICA N CE OF RE VELA TION. 

meaning of the thesis so far as it relates to natural 
evil is, that objectively considered such evil is not 
caused by sin, but subjectively considered it is the 
penalty of sin, because without sin it would not be 
felt to be an evil. According to Schleiermacher the 
physical world cannot be altered by sin, therefore 
death, which belongs to the order of nature, did not 
come into the world after sin, but the whole world 
appears different in consequence of sin. 'This view 
is certainly in accordance with the genius of Christi- 
anity, as a religion which contemplates all things 
from an ethical point of view. That religion takes 
an ethical view of God, of man, and of human con- 
duct ; how congruous to its general way of looking at 
things that it should bring the whole aspect of nat- 
ure under the same category, and regard the present 
state of the physical universe as in a pre-established 
harmony with the moral condition of its human in- 
habitants. The hypothesis does not necessarily im- 
ply that the order of nature was altered after sin 
entered the world ; it need imply only that in the 
teleology of the creation regard was had in the fram- 
ing of nature to the foreseen event of sin. Death, 
decay, violence may have been in the world not only 
before man sinned, but before man existed. But they 
were because he was to be ; prior in time they were 
posterior to man's sin in creative intention. God 
made the world, that is to say, such that it might be 
a fit abode for a race of morally fallible beings, with 
all the materials necessary for their moral discipline, 
with evils of diverse sorts to be regarded as penalties 
of sin, and also with manifold benefits indicative of 
Divine patience, summoning to repentance, and in- 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION 245 

spiring in the penitent hope of pardon. This view 
of the universe harmonizes best with the tendency of 
Christianity in all things to subordinate the natural 
to the moral, as opposed to the religions of heathen- 
ism, which subordinate the moral to the natural. It 
has the further recommendation, that it steers a mid- 
dle course between Optimism which sees no evil in 
nature, and Pessimism which sees in it no good ; be- 
tween the rose-coloured theories of the Deists and 
illuminists of last century, who resolutely refused to 
see a dark side in nature, and the sombre views of a 
Schopenhauer, who sees in nature so much evil that 
the universe might well be mistaken for the work of 
a devil rather than of a good God. Christianity sees 
in the world both evil and good : evil because man 
hath sinned, and God desired that man sinning should 
discover sin to be a bitter thing ; good because God 
is gracious and dealeth not with men after their sin ; 
the evil and the good bearing witness to two econo- 
mies of judgment and mercy which, however, are 
radically only parts of one redemptive economy, 
working in different ways towards the fulfilment of 
God's gracious purpose in Christ, to which the whole 
constitution of nature and the whole course of his- 
tory are subservient. 

6. The present state of things is not final. The 
faith of redemption teaches us to expect a palingene- 
sis, a renovation of all things, the introduction of a 
new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness, the advent of an aeon when the crea- 
tion shall be emancipated from the bondage of vanity 
and corruption, and when her groaning and travailing 
shall issue in the birth of a renovated world, bring- 



246 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 

ing redemption even to man's body, and completed 
sanctity to his spirit ; bringing renewal not merely to 
the individual, but to society — not merely to man, 
but to physical nature. Already Christianity has 
achieved much ; it has caused God's kingdom to come 
on this earth in at least a rudimentary way, confer- 
ring many benefits on humanity, participated in even 
by those who do not believe in Christ or so much as 
know His name. It conferred blessing on the world 
even before Christ's advent, as the hidden ground of 
God's patient bearing towards our race from the first. 
But when all has been reckoned up which Christian- 
ity has done for men in spiritual and temporal re- 
spects, for individuals and society, for Christendom 
and for Heathendom, for pre-christian and for post- 
christian ages, it comes far short of what shall be. 
We look for results more worthy of the love of God, 
more commensurate with the moral grandeur of the 
act by which the foundations of the new order of 
things were laid, more clearly demonstrating that 
Christ is the centre of the universe, in whom all 
things both in heaven and in earth are gathered up. 
We do not, indeed, expect the grand consummation 
to come soon. For we observe that Providence works 
leisurely and is never in a hurry, one day being 
with the Lord as a thousand years to us, so that He 
takes His promise as calmly the day it is made, as 
we take events which happened a thousand years 
ago ; and, therefore, our faith does not fail on dis- 
covering reason to think that millenniums may elapse 
before the work of redemption shall have reached its 
full development. Nevertheless we, according to His 
promise, look for a new heaven and a new earth 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 



247 



wherein dwelleth righteousness. For we observe 
that this also is a feature of God's providential 
working : that while He never hurries, He also never 
forgets ; though He work slowly, yet worketh He 
surely, a thousand years being to Him as one day 
to us, so that at the end of a thousand years He 
remembers and is in earnest with His purpose, as 
we remember and lay to heart our purposes the very 
day they are formed. 

To these speculative presuppositions of Christianity 
some add the doctrine of a Fall, and the doctrine of 
the Trinity. They are certainly both congruous to 
the central conception of revelation, but it may be 
doubted whether, apart from the Scriptures, we could 
deduce them from the mere idea of Christianity as 
the religion of redemption. Schleiermacher, while 
regarding Christianity as a state of completed fellow- 
ship between God and man brought about by Christ, 
denies that a fall, and by implication an unfallen 
state, are involved therein. He views Christianity 
not as a restoration, but as the completion of the first 
creation, which in his opinion did not culminate in 
a sinless man, but simply in a human being endowed 
with the bare rudiments of personality, to whom 
sin was a certain if not an inevitable experience — 
a mere matter of course. In advocating this view, 
Schleiermacher is manifestly influenced by the desire 
to maintain harmony between faith and the claims 
of science and philosophy. Nevertheless, it must be 
admitted to be a perfectly legitimate opinion from 
a speculative point of view. The fact of a Divine 
interposition for the redemption of mankind from 
the power of moral evil does not necessarily shut 



248 D C TRW A L S1GNIFICA NCE OF RE VELA TIOAT. 

us up to any particular view as to the origin of sin. 
Schleiermacher's hypothesis for the solution of that 
hard problem may be false in point of fact, but it 
is not incompatible with faith in a revelation of 
grace. As regards the doctrine of the Trinity, when 
we look at redemption as a completed fact involving 
the Incarnation, and the institution of the Church as 
a society animated by Christ's spirit, it is impossible 
not to feel that, in connection with the revelation of 
grace, God manifests Himself under a plurality of 
aspects, as Father, Son, and Spirit. But whether the 
Trinity so given be a trinity of manifestations or of 
Persons, a trinity as conceived by Sabellius or the 
Trinity set forth in the creeds, neither reason nor the 
Christian consciousness by itself could determine. It 
is, therefore, only what was to be expected when we 
find Schleiermacher, whose method of determining 
what is to be regarded a,s matter of faith is an appeal 
to the Christian consciousness, teaching a merely 
Sabellian Trinity. 

Conscious of inability to advance further in our 
unaided endeavour to ascertain the didactic import 
of revelation, we gladly turn to that sacred literature 
which was given by inspiration for instruction and 
for discipline in righteousness. But here our way is 
barred by certain moderns, who tell us that it is vain 
to go to the Bible in quest of objective truth ; one 
party affirming that the sacred book contains no ma- 
terials for the construction of any doctrine whatso- 
ever, and was never intended to supply such ; another, 
while admitting the availableness of the book for doc- 
trinal purposes, denying the absolute truth of any 
doctrines thence deduced. Of the former class Mr. 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 249 

Arnold is the best known representative ; of the lat- 
ter, Dr. Mansel. Mr. Arnold carries his agnostic 
attitude to the extreme length of denying that the 
Bible teaches us anything concerning God, even that 
He is personal. God, we are given to understand, is 
simply a personification of that righteousness to 
which the temperament of the Hebrew led him to 
attach a preponderating importance. The fact-basis 
of the personification was the observation that there 
is a Power, not ourselves, in the world making for 
righteousness. This much is implied in the Bible 
forms of speech, but nothing more ; no definite opin- 
ion concerning the nature of God, such as that He is 
personal, or that He is the intelligent Author and 
Governor of the world. The Bible writers meant to 
affirm no more than is admitted by Strauss, viz., that 
there is a moral order of the world ; they had no 
theory as to the cause of this order. 

In taking up this position, Mr. Arnold assumes that 
the only source of information concerning Jehovah, 
or the Eternal, accessible to the Bible-writers, was 
nature and ordinary providence. He altogether ig- 
nores the miraculous element, and along with that the 
gracious aspect of God's character whereof the mira- 
cles are the fact-basis. But the question is : can we 
retain these and still affirm that the Bible implies no 
particular view of the Divine nature and character? 
That we can legitimately make such an affirmation 
concerning the Bible, as conceived by Mr. Arnold, is 
admitted ; for on that view the fact-basis of all Script- 
ure representations which are to be regarded as of 
permanent value is simply that moral order of the 
world which, as we have seen, is recognised by men 



250 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



of all schools, even by atheists. But can we say the 
same thing of revelation as we conceive it ? We can- 
not ; for the fact-basis here is not merely the moral 
order of the world, which forms part of the course of 
nature, but supernatural manifestations of God, not 
regarded as facts at all by Mr. Arnold, and which 
cannot be recognised as facts by any man who is not 
a theist. Assuming the reality of the fact-basis of the 
Bible name for God, — the Redeemer, — we learn these 
things from it. First, God is a Being who cherishes 
purposes, sets Himself ends to be worked out by a 
process of historical evolution. Second, God is a Being 
who, while usually working according to the course 
of nature, and always so shaping His action that it 
shall enter easily and harmoniously into that course, 
is yet not chained down to the fixed order of things, 
but is so far above the world, and free in His relation 
to it, that He can at will produce results which nature 
itself could not accomplish. In these two inferences 
combined we have the idea of Personality, so abhorred 
by Pantheism and so ridiculous in Mr. Arnold's eyes. 
God has conscious purposes which He freely fulfils, 
sometimes by natural causes, sometimes by supernat- 
ural ; in other words, if we believe the narratives in 
the sacred book to be historical, we must conceive of 
God as self-conscious and self-determining, that is, as 
personal. If we reject the attribute, we must reject 
the alleged facts by which its ascription to God is 
justified and demanded. That is to say, we cannot 
with Mr. Arnold deny the Personality of God without 
also with him mutilating the Bible, and cutting out of 
it everything miraculous. Of course by the method 
of mutilation you can make the Bible teach just as 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION 2 5 I 

little as you like. But if the question be what notion 
of God is suggested by the Bible, then it must be 
taken as it stands, and being so taken, it will be found 
to yield a very different idea of God from that ex- 
tracted from it by the author of " Literature and 
Dogma," an idea into which Personality as defined 
enters as an essential ingredient. 

But the Scriptures do not merely teach by necessary 
and omnipresent implication, that God is personal. 
They exhibit Him as an ethically perfect Personality. 
The purposes which the Bible ascribes to God are 
gracious ones ; the acts it represents Him as perform- 
ing are acts of mercy and faithfulness in the further- 
ance of a benignant design. The writers have intense 
faith in the reality of Divine love, and they record 
facts which supply all the proof of its reality that is 
possible. It is certainly true that they labour in ex- 
pression when speaking of Divine love. Mr. Arnold 
remarks of the language of the Bible, that it is lite- 
rary, not scientific ; words thrown out at an object of 
consciousness not fully grasped, which inspired emo- 
tion. It is a just observation, but not in the sense 
the author intends. The Bible writers do throw out 
words at God, very specially when they speak of His 
love. Paul speaks of heights, depths, lengths, breadths, 
in connection with Divine love, without indicating to 
what he refers ; crowding thought and intense emo- 
tion here, as often elsewhere, making shipwreck of 
grammar.* Psalmists speak of multitudes of tender 
mercies, and represent God's mercy as in the heavens. 
Prophets declare that God multiplies pardons, and 



* Vide Lightfoot on Galatians, at the place chapter ii. 3-10. 



252 DOCTRINA L SIGNIFICA JVCE OF RE VELA TION. 

back the daring affirmation by the reflection that in 
the magnanimity of forgiving love, God rises in His 
thoughts and ways as far above men as heaven is 
above the earth. These are samples of phrases thrown 
out at Divine charity, but not in the sense that they 
are fine words to which no corresponding reality exists 
in the Divine nature, but rather in the sense that the 
Divine reality is great, sublime, beyond conception 
or expression. A very substantial difference. Mr. 
Arnold's words thrown out are rapturous phrases 
flung at a cloud which a man in a heated state of 
imagination mistakes for a mountain. The phrases 
quoted from the Bible are uttered by men who find 
themselves in presence of a veritable mountain range, 
and who cannot get words that shall adequately ex- 
press the feelings of admiration awakened by the ma- 
jestic sight. 

Passing from Mr. Arnold to Dr. Mansel, we find 
him, in his Bampton Lecture on " The Limits of 
Religious Thought," laying down the position that 
God cannot be known in the truth of His being, and 
that what is " revealed " concerning God in the Bible 
tells us not what God in His own nature is, but only 
what He desires that we should believe concerning 
Him. The revelation is only a quasi-revelation. This 
theory of modified agnosticism is advocated in an 
apologetic interest, the design of the Lecturer being 
to cut away the ground from below opponents of 
revealed truths by demonstrating the incompetency 
of speculation on such transcendent themes. The 
human mind can know nothing really about God ; 
therefore it cannot know that the mysterious doc- 
trines of the faith are false. There is, however, rea- 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 253 

son to fear that what was meant for defence, is, in 
effect, a betrayal of the cause of revelation. As Mr. 
Maurice put it pithily, the refutation of unbelief costs 
too much, the cost being the revelation in defence of 
which the refutation was elaborated. For if revela- 
tion be quasi, what is the value of it ? Is it a revela- 
tion at all ? If the doctrine of Scripture tell us not 
what God is, but what He would have us believe Him 
to be, how can we know that He even wishes us so to 
think? Is not the wish also quasi ? Everything on 
this hypothesis is quasi. We have a quasi revelation 
of a quasi wish that we should believe certain propo- 
sitions as quasi truths concerning a Being who in very 
deed is utterly unknowable. Can we wonder that 
men should decline to accept this system of quasis 
and make-believes, and prefer, with Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, to take up the position : if the absolute can- 
not be known, then it is incompetent to make any 
affirmations concerning it, and the only logical posi- 
tion is theological nescience. If, therefore, we are to 
hold by a revelation at all, and to escape from natu- 
ralistic agnosticism, we must believe with all our heart 
that God can be known truly, though not adequately 
—known especially on the moral side of His being. 
This certainly is the faith of the writers of the Bible, 
and between this and the agnostic creed there seems 
no tenable standing-ground. It is possible that the 
resolute maintenance of the knowableness of God, and 
of that which goes along with it, the essential identity 
of the Divine nature an4 hijman. nature, may increase 
th§ pressure of difficulties connected with particular 
doctrines, But it is folly to seek escape from such 
difficulties by adopting the sceptical tenet th^t mor- 
12 



254 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



ality is not the same thing for God that it is for men. 
Yet such is the position taken up by the Bampton 
Lecturer, in an apologetic interest. There is an ab- 
solute morality, we are told, based upon the nature of 
God ; but what that morality is we cannot imagine. 
But if we cannot know what the morality is, how can 
we know that there is a morality for God at all ? If 
Divine morality is not identical with human morality 
in kind—oi course they cannot be" identical in all par- 
ticulars — to speak of an absolute morality is simply 
to put together two mutually cancelling words. Un- 
less we can say that love means for God what it 
means for man, we had better not say that God is 
love at all ; for the statement conveys no intelligible 
idea. Far from being a revelation, it is not even 
sense. On the whole, the chief value of Dr. Mansel's 
well-meant effort is to present to the world a reductio 
ad absurdum of an apologetic method which reduces 
revelation to mystery, and relies on a system of ex- 
ternal evidences which give no aid to faith or rest to 
the heart, but at most avail to shut the mouths of 
gainsayers. 

The Bible, then, is indeed profitable for doctrine. 
The benefit, however, is not to be attained without 
pains on the learner's part. For the Bible does not 
supply us with a ready-made summary of the doc- 
trinal import of revelation, stating in so many propo- 
sitions what knowledge the self-manifestation of God 
in grace conveys concerning God Himself, concerning 
man the recipient of His grace, and concerning the 
blessings which by His grace God confers on man. 
This propositional or scholastic way of teaching is not 
at all the manner of the Bible. Nowhere in the sacred 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICA NCE OF RE VELA TIOJV. 255 

book do we find in tabulated form a statement even 
of the more essential truths of revelation, not to 
speak of the more detailed doctrines of the second 
order of importance which have been extracted from 
the Scriptures by the learned investigations of theo- 
logians. We do find there an exact summary of 
duty ; but there is no table of credenda answering to 
the table of moral laws given in the Decalogue, set- 
ting forth, e.g., that the God of revelation is a Trinity 
in Unity; that man is a being made in God's image, 
but fallen from the ideal of his nature through sin, 
and so depraved that without Divine aid he cannot 
fulfil the end of his being ; that the benefits which 
God in His grace confers on sinful man are the free 
pardon of sin and the renewal of his moral nature ; 
and that the former is conferred for the sake of Jesus 
Christ, the Son of God, incarnate and crucified, and 
the latter communicated through the gift of the Holy 
Spirit as the immanent source of sanctification. In 
view of the innumerable controversies that have 
arisen in the course of the Christian ages as to what 
is to be believed, and the melancholy effect which 
these controversies have had in disrupting the Church 
into a thousand fragments, it may seem a matter for 
wonder and regret that it did not please God to give 
in the sacred book a distinct, clear statement of all 
that was necessary to be believed in order to salva- 
tion, and as a basis for the fellowship of saints — a 
sum of saving knowledge not to be subtracted from 
or added to. But it may be questioned whether it 
were possible to frame a sum of doctrine expressed in 
language that should exclude the possibility of doubt 
or dispute as to its meaning, on the part even of the 



256 DOC TRINA L SIGNIFICA NCE OF RE VELA TION. 

stupid, the subtle, or the perverse. In any case, such 
a doctrinal summary has not been vouchsafed. The 
Bible conveys to us its didactic lesson in a very occa- 
sional, indirect, and indefinite way. Its method is 
literary, not dogmatic. It teaches, as it were, without 
intending to teach ; relates a history, and leaves us to 
infer the lesson ; indites a psalm expressive of the 
sentiments awakened in the writer's mind by contem- 
plation of the manifestation which God has made of 
Himself, and leaves us to find out by poetic sympathy 
the thought embodied. The Bible contains all sorts 
of literature — histories, prophecies, poems lyric and 
dramatic, proverbs, parables, epistles. All are profit- 
able for doctrine, but none are dogmatic ; all are ex- 
cellent for religious edification, but disappointing 
from the point of view of scholastic theology. Not 
even the epistles of Paul can properly be character- 
ised as dogmatic in the scholastic sense. The four 
great epistles are full of doctrine of the most impor- 
tant character, but it is conveyed in an occasional, ab- 
rupt, vehement way, by a man engaged in a great 
controversy as to the meaning of Christianity, — whose 
bosom is agitated by strong emotion, and whose lan- 
guage is a faithful reflection of his feelings — eloquent, 
but inexact ; crowded with deep, grand thoughts, but 
with thoughts that struggle for utterance, and are 
sometimes only half uttered in broken sentences in 
which grammar is shipwrecked on the rock of he- 
roic passion. The writing is noble, Divine, inspired 
in every sense of the term, most profitable for doc- 
trine ; but how different from the style of dogmatic 
theology, with its careful definitions, and minute dis- 
tinctions, and cold, passionless, scientific diction ! 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



257 



This account of the Bible, if it do not, as some think, 
prove that it is neither fitted nor intended to teach 
doctrine, may, at least, seem to justify despair as to 
the possibility of extracting from it the due doctrinal 
use. This, however, is an exaggerated view of the 
difficulty of using the Scriptures for doctrinal purposes. 
What has been said as to the style and manner of the 
sacred writings does not necessarily signify more than 
this — that to use these writings for such purposes is 
a delicate task, demanding for its right performance 
much pains, patience, and wisdom. This is certainly 
true, and cannot be sufficiently laid to heart. The 
Bible is a precious gift of God to man, containing the 
record, the interpretation, and the literary reflection 
of the revelation of His grace in history. But it is a 
gift which imposes on those who receive it in faith a 
heavy responsibility. It does not tell us in a pre- 
pared form of words, the didactic significance of its 
own contents. It leaves us to ascertain that for our- 
selves. And it is our duty to address ourselves to the 
task with all diligence and earnestness ; for what no- 
bler or more urgent work can we engage in than that 
of mastering the thought of so unique a volume ? But 
we must enter upon this study with profound humili- 
ty, mindful how much has been left to ourselves, and 
mindful also of the risk we are exposed to of perform- 
ing our part not wisely, but foolishly. We may miss 
the meaning altogether, and read into the book our 
errors instead of taking out of it God's truth. We 
may stop short before we have ascertained even the 
most essential truths of faith, or we may carry the 
work of formulating Scripture teaching to excessive 
lengths, to the effect of compromising the dignity of 



258 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 

the sacred book, and weakening in men's minds the 
reverent esteem in which it ought to be held. The 
risk of miscarriage somehow is so great that we do 
well to read with the prayer in our heart — " Send 
forth Thy light and Thy truth." The actual miscar- 
riage in past ages has been so vast and so disastrous 
that we may not take amiss the rebuke and scorn of 
the world. When Shimei cursed David, a fugitive 
from his throne, the object of malediction, conscious 
of his own shortcoming, said : " Let him curse, for the 
Lord hath bidden him." In like manner, when the 
apostle of modern culture tells professional theologians 
that they are incompetent, bungling interpreters of 
Scripture, and that literary men, acquainted with the 
best products of genius in all languages, are far fitter 
for the delicate task than they, it becomes those to 
whom the reproach is addressed to submit to it in si- 
lence, sensible of the wrong that has been done to the 
Divine word by its professional expounders. 

In making these observations I do not mean to sug- 
gest that Mr. Arnold, or any man of like gifts and 
spirit, is entitled to sit in judgment on theologians by 
profession. While readily acknowledging that divines 
have come grievously short in their endeavours to 
gather the main sense of Scripture, and that their pro- 
fession exposes them to certain biassing and blinding 
influences, I cannot regard the discursive reading of a 
litterateur as the fittest possible preparation for the 
interpretation of the sacred writings. If the organ of 
insight into the Bible be not theological lore, still less 
is it mere literary taste. The true qualification for 
the sound understanding of the Divine book is an en- 
lightened Christian consciousness, a mind believing in 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



259 



redemption, and persuasively influenced by that faith. 
No man can even begin to understand the Bible who 
does not believe in God's grace, and to whose vocab- 
ulary the very word is a stranger. And our insight 
into the meaning of holy writ will be in proportion to 
the strength of our faith in Divine grace, and the 
measure in which it has proved in our experience an 
emancipating power, bringing liberty to our reason, 
our conscience, and our heart. While grace is not be- 
lieved in, or while it is believed in feebly, there is a 
veil on the face which hides the glory of the Lord as 
reflected from the sacred page. To understand the 
Scriptures is above all things to understand the lov- 
ing-kindness of the Lord ; and it may be taken for 
granted that he v/ho has narrow thoughts of God's 
love, and of the purposes of that love towards man- 
kind, no matter what the extent of his learning may 
be, has but a very dim apprehension of the drift of 
the Scriptures. And as a mind in which the love of 
God has been shed abroad by the Holy Ghost is the 
aptest to discern the scope of the Scriptures as a whole, 
so is it best able to determine what amid all that is 
taught there are the things of chief concern. It dis- 
cerns, as if by instinct, what doctrines are most inti- 
mately connected with the great central truth of the 
purpose of grace. The scholastic dogmatist can de- 
termine by proof-texts that this or that dogma is de 
facto taught in Scripture ; but the doctrines are all 
alike to him — that they are scriptural is the one con- 
sideration in his eyes. But the Christian mind can 
determine with some degree of probability which of 
all the doctrines that Biblical theology, by its learned 
appliances, can extract from the Bible, are of vital im- 



2 6o DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 

portance to faith and life. While accepting all Script- 
ure as profitable for doctrine, it finds in certain teach- 
ings of Scripture the food of its life. It can classify 
doctrines according to their value, and its principle of 
classification is relationship to the central truth of 
God's grace. The nearer to that the more vital. 

The dogmatic spirit may be jealous of this power 
of discernment ascribed to the believing mind, and 
may even see in the claim advanced on its behalf an 
attempt to set the " inner light " above the written 
word. This, however, would be a crass misunder- 
standing. It is one thing to make the Christian con- 
sciousness judge of the truth of Scripture teaching, 
quite another to make it judge of its comparative 
value. Surely it is not presumptuous to claim for 
faith the power to discern that the doctrine of the 
incarnation is of more importance than a doctrine, 
based on texts, concerning the exact constitution of 
Christ's person ; or that the fact that Christ died for 
our sins is of more moment than any theory of 
atonement, claiming for itself Scripture support? 
Not only may the Christian mind distinguish be- 
tween doctrines at once as to certainty, and as to 
importance, but it must. The healthy life, both of 
the individual believer, and of the Church, depends 
on such distinctions being made, and made wisely. 
What injury, is it asked, can neglect to classify doc- 
trines as to their importance, occasion ? The indi- 
vidual Christian in his indiscriminate zeal for doc- 
trines, for the specialties of his own creed, as dis- 
tinct from the catholic verities held by all believers, 
may forget to his loss that the kingdom of God is 
not meat or drink, or say Calvinism or Arminianism, 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 2 6l 

but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy- 
Ghost. The Church, through the same zeal, may be 
unnecessarily divided into mutually exclusive sec- 
tions, as it is this day to the astonishment of the 
world and the grief of all Christ-like men. In their 
attempts at classification of truths in the order of 
importance, Christians, whether acting individually 
or collectively may, probably will, err. But that does 
not excuse neglect of the task. The work has to 
be done, and it has not been done to our hand, and 
greater evil may result from leaving it unattempted, 
than from doing it in a way that falls far short of 
perfect wisdom. 

To draw up an exhaustive list of the great funda- 
mental truths which, like planets, revolve around the 
Sun of a revelation of grace in the firmament of 
Scripture, is certainly a task from which, apart from 
the fear of criticism or contradiction, one may very 
excusably shrink. Yet there are some truths which, 
without pretending to exhaustiveness, we may with 
some measure of confidence characterise as of ex- 
ceptional importance. To such belong the doctrine 
of God as manifested in the revelation of grace, the 
doctrine which unfolds the nature of the gift of 
grace, and the doctrine concerning man as God's 
grace finds him and as that grace exhibits him after 
it has wrought its full effect upon him. As regards 
the first, the Church in all ages has confessed that 
God is manifested in the economy of grace as a Trin- 
ity in Unity. This truth, as was to be expected, 
does not come clearly to light till the epoch of ful- 
filment. It is from the New Testament that we learn 
concerning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. 
12* 



262 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 

In the unfolding of the doctrine a place of supreme 
importance belongs to the great event of the Incar- 
nation, itself a truth of cardinal importance, as ex- 
hibiting Divine grace in action up to the full measure 
of gracious possibility. No man knew the Father 
till the Son came and revealed Him, so the Gnostics 
read the remarkable text in Matt. xi. 27. It is a 
true saying, though not in the sense they put on it, 
which was that the God of the Old Testament was 
an altogether different God from Him whom Jesus 
made known. The God of the Old Testament is, as 
we have seen, a God of^grace. Nevertheless, speak- 
ing comparatively, no man knew the Father till Jesus 
declared Him. When Jesus came the Fatherhood of 
God became once for all a fundamental truth of the- 
ology, not merely in virtue of His teaching that truth, 
though that fact exercised a signal influence in giv- 
ing currency to the doctrine, but still more by His 
self-manifestation as the Son of God. He offered 
Himself to the world as a Divine being who had 
come to earth to seek the lost. Yet He represented 
Himself as standing in the relation of Son to God as 
Father. Hence believers in Him learnt to distin- 
guish in God, Father and Son, and to think of the 
Divine Being as no abstract unity, but as involving 
plurality. The Son coming in the flesh became the 
Exegete of God both as to His nature and as to His 
mind, — in the one respect, in so far as He made 
known the existence of relationship in God ; in the 
other, in so far as He dwelt among men, Himself a 
genuine man, " the Son of Man " full of grace, and 
showed to them that love was the very centre of 
God's moral being. 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



263 



But the revelation of Paternity through Sonship 
does not exhaust the knowledge of God communi- 
cated to men by Christ. For He spake to His dis- 
ciples of a Spirit of truth and purity, Source of il- 
lumination and holiness, who should be with them 
after He had Himself left the world. Of this Spirit 
He spake as another, distinct from His Father and 
from Himself, yet standing in most intimate rela- 
tions to both ; proceeding from the Father, and in 
the experience of believers taking the place of Him- 
self, His alter ego* It is true this doctrine of the 
Spirit occurs chiefly in the representation of Christ's 
teaching contained in the fourth gospel, which to 
many in these days is an utterly untrustworthy 
source of information as to the words actually spoken 
by our Lord, or at the very least a highly-coloured 
medium ; though, strange to say, Mr. Arnold, for 
certain reasons, prefers it to the synoptical gospels. 
But if we are driven from John we can take refuge 
in Paul. For Paul's acknowledged Epistles contain 
the same doctrine of God as that which we gather 
from the four gospels. Paul knows of the grace of 
the Incarnation, and speaks of it in terms at once 
explicit and pathetic.f He also knows of a Divine 
Spirit conceived of not merely as transcendent, 
source of miraculous charisms, but as immanent, 
dwelling in the Church and in the individual be- 
liever as a source of ethical influence, promoting 
the illumination and sanctification of the body of 
Christ. This Spirit he calls now the Spirit of God, 
anon the Spirit of Christ, yea, he sometimes identifies 



* John xiv. 16. f 2 Cor. viii. 9. 



264 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 

the immanent Spirit with Christ, saying, the Lord is 
the Spirit* a view exactly coinciding with that sug- 
gested in the fourth gospel, where Jesus in one part 
of His discourse says : " I will pray the Father and 
He will give you another Comforter, even the Spirit 
of truth " ; and a little further on : "I will not leave 
you orphans, I will come to you/'f implying that the 
other Comforter as a fact of experience will be Christ 
Himself spiritually present. Are we to look on this 
doctrine of Paul's concerning Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, and especially concerning the immanent Spirit, 
as an invention of Paul, the product of his fertile 
brain working on the original datum that Jesus was 
the Christ crucified for sin, accepted by him at his 
conversion ? How much more probable that in 
these letters of his we have a trustworthy reflection 
of the faith current in the Church some twenty years 
after the crucifixion, and current because it in turn 
was a trustworthy reflection of the apostolic tradition 
concerning the teaching of Christ. That the doc- 
trines of the Incarnation and of the Holy Spirit are 
not by any means so prominent in the synoptical 
representation, as in that of the fourth gospel, need 
be no reason for doubt as to the historicity of the 
latter. Even inspired men know only in part, and 
one may know more than another, and a later writer 
is likely to know more than an earlier as time and 
events develop the significances of words spoken by 
Him to whom all bear witness; and therefore it 
is very credible that the most advanced account of 



* 2 Cor. iii. 17. See also ver. 18, aadcbg arrb Kvpiov Tzvevfiarog. 
f John xiv. 16, 18. 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 265 

our Lord's doctrine is not an advance beyond His 
words, but towards them and towards a more perfect 
comprehension of their meaning, — a development not 
beyond, but up to the stature of the great Master. 
But suppose it were otherwise, and the doctrine of 
Paul and of the author of the fourth gospel concerning 
God were developments beyond the letter of Christ's 
utterances, due to the action of their minds on the 
data of His gospel, what would the position amount 
to? Simply to this: that men who believed the 
gospel of God's grace found themselves compelled 
to think of God as a Trinity ; that is to say, that 
the doctrine of the Trinity, far from being the idle 
speculation that some account it, is simply the form 
under which all must think of God who sincerely 
believe in a Revelation of Grace. Apart from such 
faith that doctrine may appear a mere unintelligible 
mystery ; to those who believe it may still appear 
mysterious, but it will be something more, — darkness 
produced by excessive light, grace dazzling by its 
brightness. 

Of the nature of the gift of grace, of " the things 
that are freely given to us of God,"* the Scriptures 
contain manifold intimations. Hebrew prophecy 
shows us the forms under which the summum bonum 
presented itself to view in the era of preparation and 
hope. The New Testament makes us acquainted 
with the aspects under which the same thing was 
presented to faith by our Lord and the apostles and 
others, authors of New Testament writings. Four 
leading types of doctrine on this subject may be 



* 1 Cor. iii. 12. Ta irrb rov Qeov x^ 10 ®^™ yf£v. 



2 66 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 

distinguished. The gift of grace is exhibited as 
the Kingdom of God, as the Righteousness of God, 
as unrestricted Fellozvship with God, and as Eternal 
Life. The first is the keynote or watchword of our 
Lord's teaching in the synoptical representation, the 
second is the great theme of Paul's teaching, the 
third is the leading thought of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, and the fourth takes the place of the first 
in the Johannine account of our Lord's doctrine. It 
would be an interesting and instructive study which 
proposed for its aim to develop the significance of 
each of these respective view-points and their mutual 
relations. That they are distinct is evident at a 
glance. The peculiarity of the first is that it exhibits 
the summum bonum as a social thing. The gift of 
grace, whatever it may be, is not given to men as 
isolated individuals, but as citizens of a sacred 
commonwealth. This doctrine is thoroughly con- 
genial to a revelation of grace, for it implies that 
men cannot be blessed in solitude, but only in and 
through brotherhood, as sons of God and members 
of one Divine family. We are therefore not surprised 
to find that all that Jesus taught concerning the 
kingdom, bore on its face that the kingdom of God 
is a kingdom of grace. He said that the kingdom 
was for the humble, the childlike, the poor, the 
publicans and sinners, for all who only repented and 
believed. How could he say more emphatically that 
the kingdom was a kingdom of grace, a society over 
which God ruled as a gracious Father, and whose 
members, whatever their previous characters may 
have been, were all dear to Him as sons? 

Paul's view of the gift of grace is thoroughly distinc- 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION 267 

tive. Jesus had said : " Seek ye the kingdom of God 
and His righteousness." The two things named were 
the highest goods of life in the esteem of all devout 
Israelites. They desired the kingdom, and they 
sought after righteousness. Paul sought after both, 
and he speaks of both in his writings ; but whereas 
Jesus, also speaking of both, yet spake chiefly of the 
kingdom, Paul, on the other hand, spake chiefly of 
the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God 
is the great theme of his principal epistles. It is a 
striking form of words, and does not mean what an 
inexperienced reader would almost certainly suppose. 
By the righteousness of God, Paul means not the 
righteousness which conforms to the Divine standard, 
or which God demands, but the righteousness which 
God gives. It is a synonym for God's free grace, be- 
stowing on men forgiveness, and treating them as 
righteous irrespective of sin. It is closely connected 
in Paul's system of thought with the death of Christ. 
That death Paul regarded as an atonement for sin, 
the death of the just for the unjust, of the sinless for 
the sinful ; therefore, as he tells us in one of his epis- 
tles, it was a standing part of the gospel which he 
preached in every, place, that Christ died for our sins. 
His doctrine concerning man's relation to God was 
that, because of Christ's death, the believing man is 
in God's sight as one who never sinned : righteous, a 
son, accepted in the Beloved. A believing man so 
treated by God in His grace, is a man in possession 
of the righteousness of God. This doctrine appears 
at first not only distinct from that of Christ, but for- 
eign and uncongenial. Yet there is more affinity be- 
tween it and the doctrine of the Master than appears 



2 68 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 

on the surface. That God pardons men for Christ's 
sake is a doctrine identical with that which Jesus 
Himself taught when He said, ■" This is My blood of 
the New Testament, which is shed for many for the 
remission of sins."* That pardon and acceptance for 
Christ's sake should be called the righteousness of 
God, may seem an artificial mode of speaking, but 
that is a question of words; the thing so named is 
acceptable and in harmony with the teaching of 
Christ. At another point the Pauline doctrine seems 
to recede from that of Christ, in this respect, viz., 
that in Paul's system the summum bonum seems to be 
an affair of the individual ; while in Christ's teaching, 
as we saw, it is a social thing. But here, also, the 
two systems approach each other more closely than 
is apparent on the surface. For in Paul's view the 
believer does not obtain the blessing of righteousness 
in a state of isolation, but as a member of a spiritual 
organism of which Christ is the head, and Christians 
the body. This solidarity of believing men with one 
another and with Christ is the basis of Paul's doctrine 
of objective or " imputed " righteousness, and that 
which redeems it from the charge of artificiality, or 
the still more serious charge of questionable morality. 
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the supreme boon 
of Divine grace appears as unrestricted absolutely free 
communion with God. It is set forth as the very 
mark or distinctive characteristic of the era of the 
better hope, that under it we can draw nigh to God,f 
with true heart, in full assurance of faith. ;£ Christian- 
ity is the religion of access, as distinct from the Levi- 



* Matt. xxvi. 26. f Heb. vii. 19. % Heb. x. 21. 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION 269 

tical religion, which was one of distant relationship : 
God's honour carefully guarded ; man standing afar 
off worshipping in awe. There is now no veil within 
which none may enter except the priests, no second 
veil beyond which none may penetrate save the high 
priest, and he only once a year, and not without care- 
ful precautions against the consequences of an ap- 
proach not according to rule. The veils are rent 
asunder, and the distinction between a holy place and 
an inaccessible most holy place is annulled. Chris- 
tians may come into the very presence of God, and 
have the freedom of all the chambers of the heavenly 
temple, their Father's house on high. Thither Christ 
has entered as the great High Priest of humanity, but 
entered in an entirely new capacity ; not as mere re- 
presentative or substitute, as in the case of the Aaronic 
high priest, but as forerunner .* Aaron went into the 
most holy place in the people's stead, going into a 
place where they might not follow him. Jesus, our 
Priest after the honourable order of Melchisedec, en- 
ters the heavenly most holy place as our pioneer, to 
prepare a place for us as He said to His disciples. 
This forerunnership of Christ is the originality of 
Christianity as compared with the Levitical religion, 
and it is its glory. It is the conclusive proof of its 
being the perfect and therefore the eternal religion. 
A religion which kept men standing at a distance 



* Heb. vi. 20, unhappily translated in the English version 
" whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus" ; as if the 
idea of forerunner were one familiar to the Hebrews, whereas it 
was a novelty, and as such is introduced here. The passage 
should be rendered — "Whither as forerunner is for us entered 
Jesus." 



270 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 

awe-stricken, and hedged God about with mystery to 
guard His majesty from violation, could not be the 
final form of the relation between God and man. The 
existence of the veil was an infallible sign of a rude 
religion, fit only for the childhood of humanity, and 
but a shadow of good things to come. Such a reli- 
gion is doomed to be outgrown, antiquated, and su- 
perseded. But a religion which abolishes all envious 
restrictions, and brings man into the most intimate 
fellowship with God, can never be replaced by a better. 
It is the best possible, and therefore ought to be per- 
ennial ; the perfect, and therefore the final, form of 
man's relation to God. Accordingly, this epistle, in 
the most emphatic manner, claims for Christianity the 
honour of being the eternal religion in contrast to the 
Levitical religion, whose transiency is asserted with 
equal emphasis. That Christianity is the eternal reli- 
gion is, indeed, the chief thought of the epistle re- 
garded from the apologetic point of view, as the con- 
ception of the essence of religion as unrestricted access 
to God is the leading dogmatic thought. 

The great theme of John's gospel, finally, is eternal 
life. This life, as John represents it, is not a future 
good to be attained after death. It is the true life of 
man possessed now by every one who knows the true 
God and Jesus Christ His Son. It is a life independ- 
ent of time and chance, consisting in blessed fellow- 
ship with God through faith and love. But just be- 
cause the author of the fourth gospel believes in this 
eternal life, he also believes in the life everlasting. 
Over one who possesses eternal life death can have 
no power ; even his body is proof against the law of 
corruption. All who love God are like God Himself, 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 2 7 1 

everlasting. The world passeth away ; but he who 
doeth the will of God abideth for ever. Similar is the 
doctrine taught by Paul, and, indeed, throughout the 
New Testament. The conception of eternal life is, in 
no case, purely eschatological. That life is viewed as 
immanent in the Christian from the moment he be- 
comes a believer. But its nature is conceived to be 
such that immortality is involved as a corollary. 
Hence, just because the gospel has brought to light 
this true life of faith and fellowship with God the 
fountain of life, it has also brought to light immor- 
tality. 

The Bible doctrine concerning man is at once hum- 
bling and inspiring. The grace of God is represented 
as finding men in a state of serious moral corruption 
and consequent unblessedness. That this should be 
so is implied in the very fact of a revelation of grace. 
They that be whole need not a physician ; if, there- 
fore, God has undertaken in behalf of mankind the 
healer's task, it may be inferred that the patient la- 
bours under a grave malady. A variety of significant 
and pathetic words and phrases are employed to de- 
scribe man's condition, some very sombre, others 
more hopeful. The objects of God's gracious com- 
passion are described as sick, lost, blind, asleep, dead, 
far-off, without strength, subject to vanity. Such 
terms, on the most moderate interpretation, studious 
to avoid all theological exaggeration, justify a strong 
assertion of human guilt, depravity, and wretchedness. 
The contemplation of such a forlorn plight naturally 
suggests questions as to its origin. The Bible con- 
tains important hints on that subject, which cannot 
be overlooked by Biblical or dogmatic theology, but 



272 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



which are not so essential to the doctrine of faith as 
those that describe man's actual condition. The 
supremely important fact is that sin is here, not how 
it originated. It was the fact of sin that made a 
revelation of grace necessary, and it is that fact above 
all things which we, the beneficiaries of God's grace, 
need to lay to heart. No man can be a true believer 
in a revelation of grace who does not lay the fact to 
heart ; the same thing cannot be affirmed concerning 
one who is perplexed by the problem of the origin of 
sin. Even if the Scriptures had contained no intima- 
tions on that subject, the need for a Divine interpo- 
sition in man's behalf would have remained the same, 
making the same demands on our faith and gratitude. 
In proportion as the Bible humbles men by its 
picture of his natural condition, it exalts him by the 
prospect it holds out before him. The two parts 
of its doctrine of man must be looked at together 
to be justly appreciated. The Bible takes a sombre 
view of the reality of human character because it has 
a high ideal of man's nature and destiny. It would 
not humble him so low if it did not mean to exalt 
him so high. The exaltation abundantly compen- 
sates for the humiliation. Man, as the recipient of 
Divine grace, is the son and heir of God ; all things 
are his now and for ever. Being justified by faith, he 
has peace with God, and rejoices in the hope of the 
glory of God. Not only so, he rejoices also in tribu- 
lations, because they contribute to the development 
of his character, and therefore to the confirmation of 
his hope. Not only so, he rejoices above all in God 
Himself, as his chief good, the bliss of heaven, the 
Comforter amid present afflictions, by His benignant 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



273 



providence making all things work together for good. 
These are great benefits, but they do not exhaust the 
privileges of the justified. Christians have the fur- 
ther honour to be fellow-workers with God in the 
grand problem of the transformation of the world 
into the kingdom of heaven. They are a chosen 
generation, and they have been chosen that they may 
show forth the virtues of Him who called them out 
of darkness into light, letting their light shine be- 
fore men so that men, seeing their good works, may 
glorify their Father in heaven. They are the salt of 
the earth, the light of the world, the leaven in the 
dough. 

These, then, are among the more essential truths 
of the revelation of grace. God manifested as a 
Trinity through the Incarnation of Christ, and the 
mission of the Comforter. Men found by God lost, 
impotent, dead, alienated, — lifted up by His grace into 
a region of holiness and blessedness ; forgiven for the 
sake of Him who was crucified for sin ; admitted to 
intimate fellowship with God, and made partakers 
of eternal life ; united into a holy commonwealth, in 
which they are related to God as sons, to each other 
as brethren, exhibiting in their mutual converse the 
communion of saints, and, as a spiritual society, 
having for their high vocation to bring about the 
consummation of the desires which Jesus taught His 
disciples to cherish for the advancement of God's 
glory, the coming of His kingdom ever more exten- 
sively, and the doing of His will on earth as it is 
done in heaven. 

It is a short creed ; yet he who sincerely owns 
these truths is a true Christian, accepted of God, a 



274 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 



member of the kingdom of God, and worthy to have 
part in the fellowship of saints ; in the best catholic 
sense of the word, an orthodox believer. Hitherto the 
fellowship of saints has been broken up and largely 
nullified by sectional creeds, in which the doctrine 
of faith is mixed up with the theology of the schools. 
Perhaps this was inevitable, but it may fairly be ques- 
tioned if it ever was legitimate, or anything but a 
calamity due to human infirmity and sin. In any 
case, the present condition of the world and of the 
Church forces upon thoughtful men, earnestly con- 
cerned for the realization of the Divine ideal, the 
question whether the past state of things ought to be 
perpetuated. The Church is enfeebled by divisions 
and controversies which render the communion of 
saints little more than a name, and reduces her 
spiritual influence to a minimum ; Christianity, in 
consequence, seems to have lost its self-propagating 
power, and to have become a spent force, destined no 
longer to give rise to important developments. Utter 
unbelief, originating from scientific, philosophic, or 
social causes, judging from all observable symptoms, 
seems to be spreading on every side. Can nothing 
be done to remedy this state of matters ? Must we 
continue as we- are, each sect holding fast by its 
peculiar dogmas, and all the sects regarding each 
other with a suspicious eye, and trust to the mil- 
lennium for the cure of all present evil ? Or shall 
we go to the opposite extreme, and, to accommodate 
the sceptical spirit of the age, discard all dogmas and 
doctrines alike, and reduce Christianity to the Deistic 
Trinity, God, duty, and immortality, as the only 
religious certainties ? Both views have their advo- 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 275 

cates in the religious world, but it is not likely that 
deliverance will come from either of these quarters. 
The hope of the future seems to lie neither in a 
creedless Church nor in a Church clinging supersti- 
tiously to all traditional dogmas, but in a Church 
which has the will and the wisdom to distinguish 
between the essential and the non-essential in reli- 
gious belief, between catholic Christian certainties 
and matters of doubtful disputation ; in other words, 
between doctrines of faith and theological dogmas. 
The emphasis with which this distinction is insisted 
on is the index of the value which the Church sets 
on faith as distinct from opinion ; and that again 
is the measure of spiritual power. A Church which 
neglects the distinction, or declines it as illegitimate, 
is a Nebuchadnezzar's image, compounded of gold, 
silver, brass, iron, and clay, and possessing the 
strength only of the weakest part ; or it may be 
likened to a child, to whom a penny seems as valu- 
able as a shilling or a sovereign — a sure mark of im- 
becility. It is certainly no part of true wisdom to 
despise pence, but, on the other hand, it is to be 
remembered that there is a penny-wisdom which 
imports pound-folly. The tithing of mint, anise, and 
cummin may be attended to with such scrupulous 
care that justice, mercy, and faith are forgotten. 

The distinction between doctrines of faith and 
dogmas of theology is one which should come into 
play in all departments of the Church's work ; in the 
preaching of the word, in the conduct of missions, in 
the construction of confessional documents, and still 
more in the catechetical instruction of the young. 
In these days the question is sometimes asked whether 



276 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 

preaching should be doctrinal or not. Opinion and 
practice differ on the point. In the judgment of 
some the less doctrine, the less definite religious be- 
lief, the better the sermon. The taste of others is 
for sermons saturated with a theological system and 
expressing all truth in terms of the system. Edifi- 
cation is best promoted by the preacher who avoids 
both extremes. Sermons should be doctrinal, but not 
theological ; the truths of faith should underlie, and 
even form the staple of all preaching, but these truths 
ought to be set forth in simple, untechnical terms. 
Among the wise counsels in the Directory for Public 
Worship, prepared by the Westminster Assembly, is 
one to the preacher not to trouble the minds of his 
hearers with " obscure terms of art." 

It is hardly necessary to point out what an impor- 
tant qualification for success in missionary enterprise 
it must be to be able to distinguish between the 
essential and the non-essential in belief, in teaching 
heathens the elements of the Christian religion. 
Above all men a missionary ought not to be a theo- 
logical pedant. This, however, is a mere common- 
place, not needing to be insisted on. It is when we 
proceed to assert the applicability of the distinction 
now in view to the construction of creeds and cate- 
chisms that we are most likely to encounter gainsay- 
ing. We are so accustomed to separatism in religion, 
or to what may be called the club-theory of church- 
fellowship, that it seems to us almost axiomatic that 
a creed should embrace all the theological proposi- 
tions to which we attach importance. Yet nothing is 
more certain than that if the visible Church ought to 
exhibit, in the widest sense possible, the fellowship 



DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF REVELATION. 2 JJ 

of saints, such fulness is neither possible nor desira- 
ble. The more catholic the communion, the less 
comprehensive the creed. If we aim at catholicity 
in Church fellowship we must be content with a creed 
embracing only the essential truths of faith to which 
enlightened Christian fidelity requires us to bear wit- 
ness. This principle, thoroughly carried out, would 
involve considerable retrenchments in all the Re- 
formed confessions. 

Catechisms, being intended for the religious in- 
struction of the young, ought to contain only the 
sincere milk of the word, expressed, as far as possible? 
in Scriptural terms. In the catechisms of the seven- 
teenth century, milk is mixed with strong meat, doc- 
trine with dogma, Scripture language with the 
terminology of the schools. The milk is, that God 
gave Christ to be a Redeemer of sinners, and the 
Scriptural way of stating the truth would have been 
to say, " God so loved the world, that He gave His 
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life." But the 
catechism offers the child strong meat instead of milk, 
by stating the truth in terms of the dogma of elec- 
tion. Again, the milk is, that Christ exercised the 
office of a priest by dying on the cross for our sins ; 
the strong meat mixed therewith is the dogma of 
satisfaction. The aim of a catechism so constructed 
is to make the catechumens not only believers, but 
dogmatically orthodox. The result, in a time like 
the present, is apt to be recoil from the orthodoxy, 
and, along with that, apostasy from the faith. 

In making these observations I am not to be under- 
stood as hinting that immediate attempts at recon- 
13 



278 DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF RE VELA TION. 

struction of creeds and recasting of catechisms are 
either likely or desirable. No one indeed would 
desire that such work should be taken in hand till the 
scope of the distinction between doctrine and dogma 
is fully realized, and the distinction itself, in all its 
breadth, frankly accepted. But though the work may 
be long deferred, there is no reason why one should 
not freely express his thoughts on the subject, and 
leave them to work as a leaven in men's minds. In 
all probability the Church has many long ages before 
it, and one may devoutly dream of the glory that is 
to accrue unto God therein as these ages roll on, and 
muse on the conditions under which that glory is to 
be advanced. Among these, in the judgment of 
many earnest men, reconstruction of the Church on 
a new, wide basis, must take its place. To this 
opinion I humbly subscribe. The Church is now 
weak, and among the causes of her weakness are 
doubt, division, and dogmatism. To renew her youth, 
and make a fresh start in a career of victory, she needs 
certainty, concord, and a simplified creed. 



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